A Writer's Guide To Everything Important: The Omnibus Edition Of Seven Essential Guides For Fiction Writers Michael Allen

This book is primarily intended to provide valuable information for any young or inexperienced writer who wishes to write full-length fiction. Much of it may well be helpful to those who write short stories or non-fiction. You can start at the beginning and read through to the end; but if you prefer you can jump immediately to the section which most interests you. See the Table of Contents, immediately below. Each of the seven guides has been reproduced here in full; you will therefore find that there is some degree of duplication. For instance, each book contains a section which provides some biographical information about the author. Occasionally, the same information will be used to illustrate the same point, if it crops up in two different books. In most cases, it will do you no harm whatever to be reminded of relevant facts and examples.

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

EVERYTHING IMPORTANT

The Omnibus Edition of Seven Essential Guides for Fiction Writers

Michael Allen

This book contains the complete text of all seven books in Michael Allen’s series of practical guides for writers. The seven books are available for purchase separately, but by buying the omnibus edition you get the whole series, unabridged, for less than half the cost of buying them as individual items. This book contains over 125,000 words in total.

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OVERALL INTRODUCTION

You can start at the beginning and read through to the end; but if you prefer you can jump immediately to the section which most interests you. See the Table of Contents, immediately below.

Each of the seven guides has been reproduced here in full; you will therefore find that there is some degree of duplication. For instance, each book contains a section which provides some biographical information about the author. Occasionally, the same information will be used to illustrate the same point, if it crops up in two different books. In most cases, it will do you no harm whatever to be reminded of relevant facts and examples.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: A short history

Part 3: Final thoughts – will traditional publishing survive? And do writers really need it anyway?

2. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: A short history of literary agents

Part 3: Disagreements and disputes

Part 4: The impact of the digital age

Part 5: Do you really need an agent?

3. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO EMOTION

4. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO VIEWPOINT

5. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO STYLE

Part 1: Introduction to the subject

Part 2: Identifying your strengths and weaknesses

Part 3: Improving your style

Part 4: Using style to reveal character

6. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO SUCCESS

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: The three principal elements

Part 3: Why do we seek it?

Part 4: How do we achieve it?

Part 5: The price we pay

7. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CAREER PLANNING

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: The traditional way of finding readers

Part 3: The new way of finding readers

Part 4: Getting your career under control

Part 5: Final thoughts

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

Some writers still want to do things the old-fashioned way.

But is that a smart move? (Clue: No. It isn’t.)

Michael Allen

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‘There are people in the publishing world – more than a few, actually – who would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.’

Stephen King

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PART 1: TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING – An introduction to the subject

1.1 Why did I bother to write this ebook?

Answer: Because for the last few years I’ve been writing a series of books which are intended to be helpful to young and inexperienced writers – especially those who are interested in writing fiction. This book is another in that series.

Although it is fifty years since my first novel was published (1963), all my writing was fitted in at the end of a working day as a professional educator. And since I spent so long as a teacher and educational administrator, my instinct is to try to pass on to younger people as much of my hard-earned knowledge as possible.

It seemed to me, when I began to put together material for this book, that it would be useful to write a short account of the massive changes in book publishing which have come about in my adult lifetime – particularly during the last ten years.

I would end the book (I thought) with a nicely balanced section which would point out that an as-yet-unpublished writer can choose to go one of two ways. Either she can try to get her work published in the traditional way – by approaching long-established book publishers who create printed books which are then sold in bricks-and-mortar bookshops – or she can publish her work independently, without any help from anyone, by self-publishing her novel in ebook form, principally via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. I would leave it to the writer – I thought – to consider the balance of advantages in either way to find readers.

That’s what I thought I would do.

But now, having completed a first draft of this book, I find myself quite incapable of doing any such thing. So I’ve had to come back and rewrite this first section.

In preparation for writing this book I assembled a huge pile of press cuttings and blog posts printed off the internet. And having ploughed my way through all that material, reading it for a second and third time, it seems to me that I have no choice but to speak plainly, and to advise new writers accordingly.

Once, and only a few years ago at that, it was absolutely obvious that an ambitious new writer with any sense would (a) try to get a literary agent interested in their work, and then (b) leave it to the agent to find a publisher for them, and finally (c) work with that publisher for ever more – or at least for a good few books.

But now, I’m afraid, I have changed my mind entirely. Until I had completed re-reading all my research material, I had forgotten just how completely misguided that old way of doing things now is. It now appears to me that any clear-headed young writer, at least if she has taken the trouble to find out as much about modern publishing as possible, has no sensible choice other than to publish her own work by becoming what is often known as an indie publisher.

If you read through the rest of this book, you will at least see why I have come to that conclusion, even if you don’t agree with it.

In the academic circles in which I once made my living, it is customary to expect that books which discuss serious issues will try to present a balanced and calm assessment of various alternative courses of action, without indulging in sweeping generalisations. But that’s not actually very helpful, at least to those who are in a hurry. And in my experience, as-yet-unpublished writers are always in a hurry.

You will understand, I hope, that I am only trying to be helpful when I say that, over my working lifetime as a writer, the trade publishers of this world have proved themselves to be utterly clueless in almost everything that matters. I once used the phrase ‘amateur night’ to describe the performance of firms which should, in theory, have been operating both efficiently and profitably. Well, they weren’t. And some of them were near as dammit criminal.

But for at least forty-five of the last fifty years, we writers were stuck with that. We had to put up with – not to put too fine a point on it – being royally screwed by some very nice and friendly people, people who were so lacking in self-knowledge that they were convinced they were doing nothing that was not fair and honourable.

But now – now all has changed. The advent of the digital age – which we may reasonably say began on 19 November 2007, with the sale of the first Kindle ebook readers – has changed everything. Most traditional publishers, sadly, are too stupid, even now, to understand how deeply it has changed. And those who do understand have mostly responded by devising new ways to screw even more money out of ignorant writers who still think that a printed book and a slot on a Barnes and Noble shelf is the height of success.

So – be warned at the start. My view is that modern writers (and I’m writing in 2014) mix with traditional publishers at their own risk. The old way now seems to me to be utterly pointless, and, as a matter of fact, dangerous. Dangerous because if you go the agent-to-traditional publisher route, you will end up being asked (required?) to sign away many valuable rights for a period which is as long as your life plus seventy years. Probably longer than seventy years, actually, because there are a number of big-business intellectual-property holders which are very keen on extending the period of copyright far beyond seventy years. Such firms are working hard to persuade American politicians, in particular, to produced the necessary legislation. Some would say that said firms are doing this through bribery. But that, of course, is a wicked lie. In any event, the contract which is nowadays likely to be placed before you by a traditional publisher will certainly be a stinker. (See section 3.9 for details.)

No, the fact is that I could not suggest that there are two equally viable ways for a writer to proceed – not with a clear conscience. If you want more detail as to why not, please read on.

1.2 What is traditional publishing anyway?

Traditional publishing is a term which came into use perhaps ten or so years ago, to distinguish the publishing of old-fashioned books, on paper, from the publishing of ebooks, such as this Kindle ebook which you are reading at present.

Some people talk of ‘legacy publishing’ as an alternative to traditional publishing.

For a good many decades, book publishing for the general reading public – both of fiction and non-fiction – has often been referred to as trade publishing. Trade publishing means the kind of books that you find in bookshops, or in paperback form in supermarkets and similar stores.

There are also a good many other forms of book publishing, which the general public seldom hears about, such as academic publishing (textbooks and scholarly books), professional publishing (reference books for specialised trades and professions), scientific and technical books, and religious publishing (Bibles, hymn books, et cetera). Many of these relatively obscure forms of publishing are, curiously enough, the most profitable. The New International Version of the Bible, for instance, has sold 400 million copies.

In this book, however, we are going to concentrate on fiction and popular non-fiction. That is the side of publishing which attracts the most publicity, especially in the case of big hits, such as the Harry Potter series, or the various Fifty Shades of Grey.

1.3 Why should writers bother to read about traditional publishing?

Mainly for the reasons just mentioned: namely that, until recently, traditional publishing offered the only method for writers of fiction and general non-fiction to achieve high sales, big money, and literary reputation. And you need to know what the old way was, in order to distinguish it from the new way.

At the time of writing (2014), traditional publishing still does offer the principal means of selling books on a grand scale, in every possible market. Not everyone reads ebooks, and if you want to have your book on sale in paperback form in every supermarket, every news stand, and every petrol station, you still need the distribution network of a big traditional publishing company. That is why, even when writers achieve success as a self-published ebook author – having shifted a million or two ebooks simply by writing a book which large numbers of people really want to read – they often sign a contract with a traditional publisher to reach their maximum sales potential through paperbacks. (Examples, E.L. James, Amanda Hocking, Hugh Howey.)

1.4 What are the aims of this book?

This is the fifth book in my series of writer’s guides, and, as with all the others in the series, the aims are practical and down to earth. The book attempts to provide you with the bare minimum of knowledge which will give you an understanding of how things work in traditional publishing, and how you can make the best of your talents as a writer.

More specifically, the aims are as follows:

(i) To provide you with a short history of publishing, from the beginning of the trade in the late fifteenth century to the present day;

(ii) To enable you to understand how likely – or unlikely – it is that you will be able to interest a traditional publisher in your work;

(iii) To enable you make informed and realistic decisions on what sort of books to write, and how much time and effort you might sensibly devote to that work;

(iv) And, finally, to show you that there are now more ways than one to make your work available to the reading public.

My experience of publishing goes back a long way now (see section 1.5, below), and I have often noticed that young and inexperienced writers are usually ambitious, and therefore hard-working. But they are also – excuse me if I sound rude – lacking in basic knowledge about the book trade, and are naïve about the hard-nosed ways of businessmen. I certainly was. The aims of this book are therefore to provide such writers with enough information to prevent them wasting vast amounts of time and effort, and thus making themselves ill with frustration. And if you think that couldn’t possibly happen to you, you’re wrong.

After the introductory sections (Part 1) the book is divided into two further parts.

Part 2 provides a short history of traditional publishing. The purpose of this is to give you a sense of perspective on an industry which has existed (one cannot sensibly say ‘flourished’) since 1450. As we approach the present day the impact of technology has been more and more crucial; in particular, the opportunities open to writers have multiplied many times over since 2007.

Part 3 considers whether traditional publishing can survive at all in the digital age. And even if it does survive (in some mutated form), do the new and as-yet-unpublished writers really need it? Or can they do better as independent self-publishers?

1.5 What makes the author of this book (Michael Allen) think he’s an expert?

An expert has occasionally been described as someone who knows one more fact than you do. And, without being too immodest, I think I’m likely to be in that position when compared with most readers (though not all).

When you are looking at a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who the author of said book is, and what makes him any sort of an authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am a couple of months short of my 75th birthday. I was first paid for writing an article in a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963; since then I have written at least 25 other novels (under my own name and several pen names). At present I have about 60 ebooks on sale as Kindle ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction. These are published under various pen-names in addition to my own, and they vary in length from 100,000-word novels to single short stories. I have written about ten non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers. See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages on Amazon sites.

In 2007 I was honoured to be invited to serve as one of the panel of three judges for the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association award of Romantic Novel of the Year.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing. Many of the examples that I give will therefore be from an English context; but you can be quite certain that the rest of the world, particularly the USA, does not behave any differently.

All spelling follows English conventions: colour instead of color, for example.

I am not going to provide hyperlinks in the main body of this book. Instead, I am going to assume that you are quite capable of googling a name or a subject if you wish to know more about a person or subject that has been mentioned in the text. This not done to eat into your valuable writing time. It is done because, when you start googling a name or a subject, you may, serendipitously, come across something which is not only relevant and fascinating, but also so obscure that not even I know about it.

PART 2: TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING – A short history

2.1 Books before printing

Ten thousand years ago, there were only about three million human beings on the entire planet; most of them were hunter-gatherers, and none of them could read or write. Today there are seven billion of us, and, at least in the western world, we are nearly all reasonably literate. (But book-reading is still confined, as one person put it, to an effete elite. Most people don’t read books.)

When the first tribes of hunter-gatherers began to settle down in the Mediterranean Fertile Crescent, civilisation (as we like to call it) was able to make substantial progress. And something like a book was an invention which occurred about two thousand years ago.

Those who settled beside the Nile discovered a common marsh plant which we now call papyrus. The stems of this plant could be split open and spread out into flat sheets which could be joined together on the left-hand side. You could then write numbers or letters on this material.

The trouble with papyrus, however, was that if removed from the dry climate of Egypt and Greece it soon deteriorated; and it was not until the invention of parchment that a more durable writing surface was available.

Parchment was made from the treated skins of soft-skinned animals such as sheep. And the best parchment was made from the carefully prepared skins of young calves.

The earliest book which I have personally been able to handle and study closely dates from 1343. It is handwritten, and three different men worked on it; you can tell by the shape of the letters. The language of the book is Latin, and it is entitled Regimen Animarum, meaning The Guarding of Souls. This book is a priest’s manual – it tells him how to conduct the mass, how to take confession, and so forth. There are only three copies known to exist, all of them slightly different.

The Regimen Animarum is written in black ink on calf-skin vellum, and it’s still in pretty good shape, with crisp black print and all its pages complete. It probably took the three scribes a year to complete the text, and perhaps forty animals were slaughtered to provide the necessary vellum.

In short, the making of books, before the invention of printing, was an expensive and laborious business.

2.2 The invention of printing

By the middle of the fifteenth century, book production had reached a peak, because there were only so many animals available for parchment. (And not a lot of skilled calligraphers, either.) But paper saved the day.

Paper was an invention of Eastern cultures, where it had been used for centuries, but from the twelfth century onwards it spread into the west. At first, the raw material of paper was linen rags – it was only in the nineteenth century that wood pulp began to be used – and the manufacture of paper was complicated. But the raw material (linen) was surprisingly plentiful, and when printing was invented the production methods for paper rapidly improved.

Printing was not invented by scholars and gentlemen: it was invented by hard, practical men, often with little education but with a sharp eye for a quick buck. If you must have one name for the inventor of printing in Europe, that name is Gutenberg; and if you must have a precise date for the beginning of printing, 1450 is the best we can do.

If Gutenberg was the inventor of printing, he was also the first casualty of this new business, or art, or science. He died bankrupt and disappointed, thus demonstrating a vitally important point.

Gutenberg, and many others like him, had discovered the one unchangeable feature of the production and publication of books – it is a hard fact of life which has remained constant for over five hundred years.

The painful truth is this. It is one thing to write a book, though it takes a huge investment of time and labour. And it is another thing to print it; though that too requires ingenuity, persistence, and capital. But the real problem – the really tricky bit in the book business – is selling the books.

As we shall see shortly, almost every publisher, since the days of Gutenberg, has at one time or another seriously misjudged the potential market for a given book, and has ended the day with a warehouse full of unwanted goods. In England, not so many years ago, a firm known as Dorling Kindersley thought they had a little gold mine in the form of books linked to the Star Wars movies. Unfortunately they were wrong. They printed what proved to be 10 million copies too many, and the firm collapsed as a result. It was taken over by Pearson and became part of the Penguin Group.

In the early days, printing was a business which appealed to technology enthusiasts, and by 1500 they had seen to it that printing was well established, despite all the many problems associated with it.

In 1490, a wealthy young man by the name of Juliarius went on a visit to Venice. As he walked through the streets he was astonished to find the stalls of numerous booksellers, piled high with printed books. Several hours later, when his host came to look for him, Juliarius was still browsing, and was surround by piles of his purchases. He was perhaps the first serious book collector.

2.3 The first three hundred years

And so, by 1500, we were well embarked on the age of printed books.

Historians will tell you that there were no great technical advances in printing between 1500 and 1800. But there were certainly some important developments.

In the early days, there was hardly any such thing as a publisher. Yes, there were authors; and there were printers; and booksellers. But the printers and booksellers were often one and the same, the bookshop being just the front room of a house, opening on to the street, with a printing workshop in the back.

The financial arrangements between authors and these printer/booksellers were doubtless numerous, and varied according to circumstance.

It so happens that I work as a volunteer guide in a library which has an important collection of early books (including the Regimen Animarum referred to above), and the collection can provide some useful examples for me to refer to.

We know, from centuries-old bookseller catalogues, that many early books were immensely practical – how to treat a lame cow, for example. But such ‘books’ were often more in the nature of pamphlets, which hung on a peg in the barn for fifty years, until they eventually fell apart. The books which tend to have survived for hundreds of years are those which were long, scholarly, and expensively bound. These had longer working lives than the pamphlets, partly because they were well made, but also, I suspect, because they were seldom handled and read.

In a library containing many such books, you can see at a glance that many of them were large by modern standards. Some seventeenth-century volumes, containing the writings of the early church fathers, were made with pages some eighteen inches tall, 12 inches wide, and as much as a thousand pages thick. In some cases the covers were made of wooden boards! Just taking one of these books down from the shelf is a major effort.

These theological texts, written in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, cannot have sold in large numbers and were presumably subsidised by the Church or by universities.

By contrast, some more commercial texts were small – five inches by three perhaps – in order to reduce costs and keep the price down.

In 1667, for example, one enterprising printer produced a small book entitled The City and Country Builder. This contained plans for building and rebuilding after the Great Fire of London (1666); it might well have benefited from a larger format, but the publisher evidently thought that a quick and cheap introduction to the subject would sell better.

It may well be that a book such as The City and Country Builder was commissioned by a printer after he had come up with the idea himself; or perhaps an enterprising journalist suggested the idea to the printer. We don’t know. But in 1650, in England, a certain Dr Walton (later Bishop Walton) came up with a fresh idea for financing a major printing project.

Walton wished to print a scholarly version of the Bible. Given that there was much discussion in those days about the true word of God, Walton proposed to scour the great libraries of the world. His plan was to locate the earliest possible versions of the various books of the Bible, in whatever language he and his fifteen associates could find. The results of these searches were then to be printed in such a way as to allow comparisons of the text to be easily made, side by side on the same page. The resulting work is known as the Polyglot Bible.

Between 1653 and 1657 Walton and his team published their Bible in six volumes. Each page, which is about sixteen inches by eleven, contains the same short passage of the Bible in up to nine different languages.

Several of the middle-eastern languages, such as Syriac, Arabic, and Persian, had never before been printed in England, and the typefaces had to be created from scratch. Given that the shapes of the letters in these languages are so extraordinarily intricate, and are printed in such small sizes (despite the size of the page), the Polyglot Bible was an extraordinary achievement.

Walton’s six-volume Polyglot Bible is one of the great triumphs of English printing. Though it is worth noting, perhaps, that English paper was not considered adequate to the task; after a false start, better supplies were brought in from France.

Dr Walton’s method of financing the operation is, however, what caused me to mention this work in the first place. Walton raised the money by inviting rich men to subscribe. A subscriber who provided £10 in advance of the work was guaranteed one copy of the finished set of volumes; £50 gave him the right to six copies.

This method of raising capital for a printing and publishing project was later used by Dr Johnson, for his Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. And interestingly enough, this kind of approach to financing a book project is beginning to find favour again, in the twenty-first century. It’s now known as crowdsourcing.

The eighteenth century saw the emergence of publishers as we now understand the term. Some well known publishing houses were established at that time, Longman (1724) being a case in point: Longman is now owned by Pearson plc, a huge modern conglomerate.

The eighteenth century also saw the emergence of the modern novel. Professors of English Literature keep themselves well employed by debating, in print, the precise details of the history of the novel, but a few facts will serve to make the point. Whatever definition you choose to apply to the term ‘novel’, it is certainly true that the latter part of the eighteenth century saw the publication of some famous works of fiction.

Here’s a short list: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1741), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759); these are among the most famous. Neither must we forget, of course, John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1766), a book which was, and perhaps still is in some quarters, considered blatantly pornographic.

2.4 The nineteenth century

It is reasonable to conclude, I think, that by 1800 the shape of publishing in our times had gradually begun to emerge.

In the first place, we now have recognisable writers of fiction. Second, we have recognisable publishers. These are individuals who find and sign up the authors (or select books from submitted works), commission the printers, and make arrangements for booksellers to sell the actual books.

We do not, as yet, have literary agents, who negotiate with publishers on behalf of writers (although there are occasionally fathers, brothers, and other advisers who write to publishers on behalf of female writers); and we do have some signs that the relationship between authors and publishers is not always going to be a comfortable one. Jane Austen, for example, one of the most famous writers of the early nineteenth century, reportedly sold an early book (Northanger Abbey) to a publisher, who did nothing with it for ten years, and then she bought it back again.

Consider too what a tedious and risky business even submitting a manuscript must have been in those days. An author would have to write the whole book out by hand – no typewriters in those days. She might, perhaps, have employed someone to copy the text for her. But then the pile of handwritten paper would have to be conveyed to the potential publisher. The mail services of the time cannot have been fast or reliable, and the whole process was fraught with risk. It’s a wonder anything ever got done.

Another important point which was well established by the early nineteenth century is that there was money in publishing (at least in those days; there’s not so much now, as we shall see).

Sir Walter Scott, while already famous as a novelist, was financially involved in a printing company which went bust. Scott could have declared himself bankrupt, or accepted the offers of rescue from his rich friends, but he made it a point of honour to pay off the debts through his writing; and, since his novels continued to prove very popular, he managed to do achieve his aim.

As the nineteenth century proceeded, the proportion of adults who could read steadily increased. And that is why writers some books, and even small pamphlets, were to sell in very large numbers.

In 1849, for example, a certain Frederick Manning and his wife Maria were put on trial for murder. The case was a sensational one, and their public execution attracted a huge crowd, the behaviour of which appalled and disgusted Charles Dickens, who wrote to The Times about it. One enterprising publisher issued a short but detailed pamphlet about this case; and although the publication was only 16 pages long, it is said by one modern authority to have sold 2.5 million copies.

Another significant development at this time was the introduction of lending libraries, which would rent out books for a much smaller fee than the cost of buying a copy. The two most famous of these libraries were run by a Mr Mudie and a Mr W.H. Smith. The latter’s name is still attached to a well established UK bookseller and stationer to this day.

Fiction was an almost unrivalled form of entertainment in the nineteenth century. There were certainly no cinemas, radio, or television. Fiction’s sole serious competitor was the theatre, which was to be found only in towns of some size. This made it possible for writers to earn very substantial sums of money.

It is at this point in history that the question of copyright becomes vitally important. Copyright is a legal concept, supported by most governments these days, which recognises that the creator of a story, or a fictional character (not to mention a photograph, a stage play, et cetera) deserves to have the exclusive rights to exploit that work, at least for a limited time. Publishers and others are normally obliged to respect copyright, subject to various penalties.

In the UK, copyright was certainly well understood by the 1660s. In 1663, the blind poet John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost to a printer for the sum of £10.

In the US, copyright was also understood, but often ignored, at least as far as English authors were concerned. In fact, US publishers largely ignored the copyright in English books throughout the nineteenth century. Macaulay’s history of England sold 400,000 copies in the US market, but the publisher sent him not a penny. Charles Dickens also suffered from piracy of his books, but took the trouble to travel to the US to complain in person.

If you want to read the best short summary of the purpose of copyright, and a sensible period of time for it to apply, read Macaulay’s 1841 speech to the House of Commons. You can find my own comments on Macaulay’s views in an essay entitled ‘Macaulay on copyright’ on the blog Grumpy Old Bookman, 6 February 2006.

2.5 The twentieth century

Allow me to remind you at this point that the only reason for this short historical survey of traditional publishing is to allow us to see how writers were enabled, over a period of some 560 years, to find a way to market their novels (and other books) to the general public.

In the beginning, before books of any kind existed, a story could only be told orally. The storyteller would stand in the light of the fire, no doubt after as good a meal as could be provided, and tell his story aloud. Very often he would use rhyming verse to make the task of remembering it easier.

Then came the development of parchment, and vellum, materials which could make a book fit to last for a thousand years; but the process of writing a book out by hand, one copy at a time, was slow, labour-intensive, and expensive.

The invention of printing, about 1450, marked the beginning of a revolution: it provided a huge reduction in cost and speed of reproduction. And by the beginning of the twentieth century, with faster machines and better quality paper, plus a hugely increased pool of customers – the result of compulsory schooling – the publishing business was well placed to become very prosperous indeed; and the authors, one might think, would become more prosperous than most of those involved in the book business.

But it didn’t quite work out that way.

2.5.1 The first part of the twentieth century

For convenience, let us divide the twentieth century into two parts: first the years prior to World War II, and then the rest of the century.

Prior to 1939, publishing trundled along fairly quietly. In the UK, something called the Net Book Agreement came into force on 1 January 1900; it remained in force for almost a hundred years.

This Agreement was a law which decreed that no one could sell a book at a price lower than that set by the publisher, though public libraries got a discount. This meant that publishing was as gentlemanly a trade as could possibly be imagined. There was no provision for cost-cutters; aggressive businessmen and deal-makers were considered unacceptably vulgar. Small but regular profits became the order of the day.

Literary agents had begun to make an appearance in the late nineteenth century, but there were still few of them. A.P. Watt was the first, in 1875, but there were few firms of any note before 1950. In theory, such agents would be men (mostly) who knew the book trade well (which most authors certainly did not). Agents would therefore be well placed to know what constituted fair remuneration for authors, and, since they often knew the publishers personally and dealt with them on a regular basis, they would be far better placed to negotiate a contract than would the author herself – the author sometimes being a distressingly naïve lady in the provinces. That, at least, was the theory, and as the twentieth century proceeded, agents became more and more influential.

Publishing at this time was a comparatively easy business to get into, as it required relatively little capital; hence, at any given time, there were quite a number of small firms. In England, a writer of fiction could probably find at least 30 possible markets for a novel, with not a lot to choose between them. And, given that it was very difficult for an outsider to find out anything whatever about any of these publishers, picking a firm to approach was often a matter of using a pin.

Paperbacks just about made an appearance in the 1930s, with the founding of Allen Lane’s Penguin imprint, but most books were hardbacks. Printing was done in the old way, with manuscripts (usually typewritten) being set in lead type and printed off in minimum runs of several hundreds – or preferably thousands. Indeed, given that the time spent setting up the machine determined most of the cost, most printers would not dirty their machine for a print run of less than 1000 copies. And these, of course had to be warehoused somewhere before (it was hoped) being shipped to booksellers.

In the first part of the twentieth century, as in every decade that we shall examine from here on, there emerged a number of ‘big name’ authors in the fiction-publishing business. These names divided into the literary and the commercial. And while it is not surprising how often the commercial names were forgotten within a few years (Baroness Orczy and Dornford Yates), it is also the case that many writers who then had a high literary reputation are also now ignored (Gertrude Stein, Edwin Arlington Robinson).

Publishing during this period can be well described by the phrase ‘an occupation for gentlemen’; indeed, when the British publisher Fredric Warburg came to write his autobiography, that was the title he gave it.

This phrase reflects an important truth about publishing. Outsiders, particularly young people who have developed a love of books, often mistake glamour and press coverage for commercial success and economic importance. But the fact is that publishing has always been a piddling little business, tiny in size when compared to any other serious business sector, and never an arena in which any decent money has been made – at least when compared with truly big business. The atmosphere in publishing was, and still is, entirely suitable for the unworldly souls who think that profits are of minor importance compared with the need to publish ‘good books’. Not only that, but the most valuable possession that a writer or a publisher can possess is a sizable private income. If you notice that your publisher is wearing a Bentley Drivers Club tie, it is probably not because he bought one with last year’s bonus. It’s because he has inherited money.

2.5.2 The second half of the twentieth century

In the second half of the twentieth century we begin to draw closer to modern times, and to conditions which existed well within the working lives of some of us.

The trends which emerged during this period can be summarised as follows:

Trend (i): Unpublished authors continued to be as ignorant of trade-publishing practices as they had been throughout history.

Unless they took the trouble to subscribe to book-trade journals, such as The Bookseller (UK) and Publishers Weekly (US), there was almost nowhere for authors to acquire any working knowledge of publishing practice. (The internet was decades away.) Subscriptions to these journals were surprisingly expensive (I should know – I was a regular reader of both for a couple of decades).

This ignorance of the trade’s conventions and dangers left the writers wide open to exploitation by the publishers. Who were not slow to use the opportunity. Exploitation is, of course, a harsh word, but that is what it amounted to, as serious examination of any standard publishing contract will reveal. A good agent could prevent that worst of such exploitation. However… it always has to be remembered that an agent has to deal with a publisher next week as well as this week. An agent cannot therefore expect to be too difficult to negotiate with and then be invited back when he next submits a book. The agent sometimes has to bend to the publisher’s wishes, rather than the authors. (Oh, what crude cynicism, I hear you cry. Damn right I’m cynical.)

Trend (ii): Paperbacks became a vital factor in the incomes of publishers and individual writers.

As mentioned above, the Englishman Allen Lane created his Penguin line of paperbacks in 1936, but it was not until about 1950 that the sale of paperbacks really took off. And the most dramatic developments were in the US.

At first, paperbacks were limited to reprints of books which had already been a success in hardback. But, before long, some enterprising businessmen, particularly in the US, began to market paperback originals. What is more, these new books were sold outside the usual trade channels: they were distributed to petrol stations, news stands, and supermarkets.

These paperback originals were frequently aimed at the bottom end of the market, intellectually and socially speaking, and they were initially despised and feared by old-fashioned ‘respectable’ publishers. LeBaron R. Baker, of Doubleday, once claimed that paperbacks would ‘undermine the whole structure of publishing.’

This remark was nothing less than the truth, of course, but the way in which it was said illustrates rather nicely the mindset of publishers at the time. Such men (and they usually were men) were not looking for fresh markets, new readers, and new ways to make a profit. Far from it. They were happy with the old way of doing things, didn’t want it changed, and resented the vulgar upstarts who were taking books into places where they didn’t belong. This attitude persists to the present day, and it is as good a recipe for commercial disaster as could be devised.

At first, the new paperback publishers and the traditional book publishers were separate companies. And since the new guys were very keen to obtain the paperback rights to established big sellers, there was a brief period when traditional book publishers and their more successful authors were the beneficiaries of bidding wars.

In 1968, for example, Fawcett paid $410,000 for the paperback rights to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. A decade later, in 1979, Bantam paid $3,200,000 for Judith Krantz’s Princess Daisy.

This last payment seems to have been something of a turning point. It finally dawned on the old-time publishers that, although they were doing pretty well out of these crude and vulgar new boys, they might do even better if they owned the paperback company outright.

From then on the thinking was that it was better for a publishing house to be ‘vertically organised’, i.e. to have its own in-house paperback division, rather than be ‘horizontally organised’, which allowed entirely separate firms to buy the paperback rights and take the full profit on paperback sales.

Today it is only the smaller fiction-publishing houses which would even think of selling paperback rights to some other company.

Trend (iii): Literary agents increased in number and influence.

By the time I began my own writing career, round about 1960, the existence of literary agents was widely known, but it was certainly still possible to submit a manuscript to a publisher yourself. Most of my books were sold through agents, but at least twice I did the job without help.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to discuss how publishers find the books which they eventually sell to the public (via the booksellers, of course).

I have previously written at length about the book-selection process in publishing houses, and you can find a full description of it in Chapter 2 of my book The Truth about Writing (available as a Kindle ebook). Suffice it to say that, in the case of books submitted to publishers by their authors, the initial reading of manuscripts has always been conducted in just about as inefficient a way as could possibly be devised.

Numerous accounts have been written, by those who have done the job, of what typically happens to unsolicited manuscripts (the so-called slush pile). These eye-witness accounts do not make encouraging reading. Giles Gordon, for example, once stated that when he was the slush-pile reader at Gollancz, he learnt how to tell whether a manuscript was any good within 15 seconds. ‘It’s just a matter of practice,’ he said airily.

As the twentieth century moved towards its end, the bigger publishers lost whatever faith they might have had in the judgement of their own staff, and decided, in effect, to delegate to others the separation of the possibly publishable from the oh-my-god. Hence the increase in the number and influence of literary agents.

The current position (2014) is that very few publishers of fiction will consider an unpublished novel unless it is submitted through an established agent. So when a novel or non-fiction book is complete, the writer’s task becomes one of finding an agent, rather than a publisher – at least as a first step.

But don’t imagine that this task is an easy one either. Barry Turner, writing in The Writer’s Handbook, once mentioned an agent who, in 14 years of reading 25-30 manuscripts a month, found 5 good ones. Another agent, at Curtis Brown, personally received 1,200 manuscripts in one year, and took on just two of the authors as clients.

Traditionally, a literary agent was rewarded by being paid 10 per cent of any contract which the agent negotiated on the writer’s behalf. But today you are much more likely to have to part with 15 per cent.

I have often remarked that being an agent is the toughest job of all in the book business, and my opinion has not changed. At the risk of being described as cynical, bitter and twisted (again), let me advise you to treat your agent (if you ever find one) as someone who is first and foremost a business person. In particular, exercise great caution if asked to sign a contract with an agent. Time was when we were all gentlemen in the publishing world, and a handshake between author and agent was enough. The parting of the ways, if either party felt it necessary, was effected in a well mannered way. But those days are gone. A literary agent is not your friend: he or she is someone you do business with.

Trend (iv): For the last fifty years, amalgamation cum conglomeration has been the name of the game.

Conglomeration means that big publishers take over small publishers, and if the original small publisher’s name survives at all, it does so as a sub-division, or marketing label, within the big publisher.

This process of big eating small has been widespread wherever publishers are found, and certainly so on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1950 there were about 30 or 40 publishers of fiction in the UK. These ranged from firms which were small and unheard of by anyone, to major firms which were well known in the book trade if not to the general public. Over the next fifty years many of these small companies were swallowed up into bigger ones, and hence into even bigger ones, so that by the end of the century there were, both in the US and UK, only about six really powerful trade-publishing firms.

Let’s consider a few examples of how this amalgamation process worked. We’ll begin with the small English firm of Frederick Muller.

The British Library records 354 books published by Frederick Muller, the first being in 1932. In the 1950s, Muller must have been quite a successful company, because it published the UK edition of Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place, a book which was a big seller in the US on account of its ‘racy’ content. By today’s standards it was about as racy as a well controlled church picnic, but you get the idea.

I had a book published by Muller myself, in 1980: Counter-coup, written under the pen-name Michael Bradford. By that time the company was clearly in some difficulty. I visited the office at one point, and was somewhat shocked by the cramped conditions in which the staff worked. The firm’s HQ was not in a venerable Georgian building in a fashionable part of London; it was out in an industrial area in north London, and the staff seemed to be housed in former sheds.

Muller at that time was owned by the UK television company HTV. But HTV never managed to make a success of it, and Muller ran up debts. There was a man called Antony White associated with the company, and in the 1980s he bought the business for a nominal £1. He was obliged, however, to take on the company’s debt, which as I remember was £400,000.

I wrote another Michael Bradford book at about that time, and I was contractually obliged to offer it to Muller first. Antony White took me out to lunch to tell me that he didn’t want to publish the book, which didn’t distress me particularly because I’d made next to nothing out of the first one, and so far as I know it was never reviewed anywhere. But I thought it was odd to invite me to lunch to say no, when a letter would have sufficed.

Anyway, by 1984 Frederick Muller had merged with the firm of Blond and Briggs. And by 1985 there had been yet another desperate attempt to restructure and, no doubt, refinance the company, under the name Muller, Blond & White.

At some point, all attempts to breathe life into this failing enterprise came to an end, and the firm disappeared into Hutchinson. There all trace of the Muller name disappeared, even as some sort of in-house imprint.

Hutchinson, you may wonder – who they?

Hutchinson was founded in 1887, and made something of a name for itself by issuing cheap editions. The first Mr Hutchinson (George) was given a knighthood for his services to publishing.

On George’s retirement, his son Walter took over, and he also expanded the business by acquiring numerous smaller and once well known firms: such as Hurst & Blackett and Herbert Jenkins. Walter was also knighted. But eventually Hutchinson ended up being taken over by Random House UK.

As the twentieth century proceeded, Random House UK also took over about a dozen London-based companies which had once been considerable powers in the land all on their own: Chatto and Windus (founded 1855), William Heinemann, Jonathan Cape, Sinclair-Stevenson, and Century were among the firms gobbled up by Random House UK.

Speaking of Random House UK allows me to give you a quick summary of the history of that company in the US.

The original founders of Random House were two lively young Americans, Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, who set up business in New York in 1927. They chose the name of their firm because they were ‘just going to publish a few books on the side at random’.

By 1958 Random House had become a leading publisher of general-interest books, but it still had only a hundred or so employees. But it grew and grew, mostly by taking over and absorbing other firms, such as Alfred A. Knopf, and Pantheon Books. Today it occupies a substantial building at 1745 Broadway in New York City – which is all a bit different from the shabby sheds in north London which were once occupied by Frederick Muller.

Random House now employs more than 4,500 staff. In July 2013, Random House and Penguin completed a £2.4 billion merger to create the biggest publisher in the world. But Random House is itself owned by Bertelsmann, which Wikipedia describes as a German multinational mass-media corporation based in Gutersloh. It is apparently a privately owned company, with a complicated share structure. It seems to me unlikely that anyone in the upper reaches of Bertelsmann knows anything much about books.

So now you know what I mean when I say that the history of publishing from 1950 has been one of constant amalgamations, mergers, and takeovers.

This process of growth by lumping together has led to considerable disadvantages for any writer trying to break into the business. When two companies merge, there is now one less market available. And that is one less chance for your novel to impress a publisher’s reader.

The reduced competition means it is less likely that two editors will feel wildly enthusiastic about your book, and will bid the price up in trying to persuade your agent to give it to them.

And these days, of course, you definitely will need an agent. Big-time editors in giant companies do not waste their time with out-and-out beginners, newbies, and (as they see it) time-wasters.

Trend (v): The relaxation of censorship in respect of sexual content.

Relaxation is not quite the word. In fact, what happened in the second half of the twentieth century is that censorship of sexual content in fiction was effectively abandoned. And if you are, say, twenty years old today, it’s very hard for you to appreciate just how massive a change this is.

In England, the Victorians in general are always considered to have been total prudes. There are apocryphal stories about Victorian hostesses covering up the legs of tables with something like trousers, because to leave them exposed would be indecent. These stories, though exaggerated, express a certain truth about Victorian fiction.

As mentioned above, the nineteenth-century subscription libraries were important sources of income for writers and publishers alike; and the two biggest such libraries were operated by men called Mudie and Smith – W.H. Smith. It so happens that both these men were hard-core non-conformist Christians, with very strict views about sex in general. Sex, they considered, was best never mentioned at all. In fact, if you could find a way to reproduce without having sex, it would be wise to use it.

These hugely influential men made it clear that they were never going to tolerate any sort of sexual hanky-panky in the books which were available in their libraries. And that circumstance, all on its own, was enough to guarantee that all commercial writers of the time fell into line and closed the bedroom door in the reader’s face.

Not only that, but there were various laws in force in England which were designed to prevent obscenity occurring in literature or anywhere else. The precise details of what constituted ‘obscenity’ were never revealed, thus leaving it open to local magistrates to make their own minds up. And if said magistrates were of the Mudie and Smith school, this could result in some very odd decisions.

Some time in my teenage years, in the 1950s, a group of magistrates in Swindon, England, ruled that a bookseller was guilty of publishing an obscene article because he had in stock a copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron. This, in case you have never come across it, is a fourteenth-century work which includes some 100 short stories varying from the erotic to the tragic. Many of the stories satirise the idleness, corruption and sexual indulgence of the monks and nuns of the day. It is regarded by scholars as an important piece of literary history. But the Swindon magistrates were having none of that. It was a dirty book. End of.

Most newspapers regarded the Swindon decision as ludicrous; but, fatuous or not, it was the magistrates’ interpretation of the law; as such, hard to challenge.

A fraction more understandable were similar decisions to punish the booksellers of various lurid paperbacks. Lurid, that is, in the sense that the covers featured women in underwear or less, but the prose was still the same old restrained stuff, with none of the so-called four-letter words in use. Hank Janson was a pseudonym created in the 1940s, and was eventually used by a series of writers of these racy thrillers; at least one such writer was prosecuted for obscenity.

In England, in the 1950s, most reasonably mature writers, readers, and printers, were fed up with the uncertainty which surrounded sex in books. They had no clear idea of how far they could go in sexual matters. One thing was pretty clear, however: if writers used words such as fuck, cunt, prick, arse (ass) and all the usual vulgar synonyms for sexual organs, they were going to be in trouble. ‘Serious writers’ in particular found this situation intolerable.

It had been intolerable even in the 1920s, when D.H. Lawrence deliberately wrote a novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which broke various taboos. Lady C described in detail the sexual relationship between an uneducated working man and a high-born lady, and it made extensive use of all the forbidden words. A small private edition of this book was published in Paris, but no one, whether author, publisher or printer, imagined that it could then be published in England as it stood.

In 1959 a new Obscene Publications Act was passed by the British Parliament. This made it possible for a book to escape prosecution for obscenity if it was held to have ‘literary merit’. This was yet another vague phrase capable of more or less any interpretation, and the following year the English publisher Allen Lane decided that it was time to end the doubt and uncertainty. He therefore published an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a Penguin paperback.

The publication of Lady C (as it was widely known) constituted an open challenge to the law. And the authorities responded by prosecuting the publishers for obscenity.

After a lengthy trial, in front of a jury, Lady C and its publishers were acquitted – much to the disgust of the judge and the prosecuting counsel. From then on, those who wrote sexual descriptions in novels felt safe in what they were doing, even if they used formerly forbidden words.

Much the same developments occurred in the US, though without, so far as I am aware, such a clear-cut landmark ruling. True, the Supreme Court had in 1933 declared that James Joyce’s Ulysses was not obscene, and this opened the door for publication of ‘serious works of literature’ which included sexual description and four-letter words. But for some time puritanism remained the dominant force in US fiction.

By way of example, some readers may remember Grace Metalious’s 1956 novel Peyton Place (already mentioned as being published by Muller in England). Peyton Place, Wikipedia tells us, was ‘reviled by clergy’ on its first publication. In 1958, when I visited the US, I was told by one respectable matron that she had tried reading the book, and after skimming through a few chapters she had inserted it into the furnace which drove the family’s central-heating system.

Despite such reactions, Peyton Place remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. Some thirty years later, however, this wicked book was considered so tame that it was read aloud, in daily excerpts, on the BBC’s radio programme for middle-aged, middle-class housewives: Woman’s Hour.

Nevertheless, puritanism died hard, and nowhere was this more true than in the city of Boston, where the city officials had wide powers to ban anything that they considered ‘objectionable’. Among the twentieth-century works which fell foul of the Boston city fathers’ rulings were (inevitably) Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, and Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs. (Boston also banned the Everly Brothers’ song ‘Wake up Little Susie’. Go figure.)

From the 1960s onwards, attitudes changed. And not only in relation to books, but also in terms of what was possible on stage and in films.

In London, stage plays had been subject to strict censorship, which was mostly carried out by ex-army officers of a puritanical turn of mind. Nearly everyone regarded this archaic system as farcical, and in 1968 it was finally abandoned. The musical Hair, which had earlier been refused a licence, was finally produced on an English stage.

In the cinema, the US Hays code made it difficult to portray anything which might reasonably be called normal sexual relations between men and women, not to mention anything abnormal.

But times also changed in Hollywood, and when they did they changed rapidly. By 1979, when I visited New York for the third time, I was able to pay a few dollars and watch people having uninhibited sexual intercourse on a wide screen and in full colour, right on Broadway; I was in no fear of the place being raided.

This experience was, I must confess, something of a novelty. Remember that only twenty years earlier it had been impossible in England, and probably in the US, to find even a nude photograph of a woman, in a magazine, which did not have the model’s pubic hair airbrushed out of existence. But in 1979 I could now see the woman’s vagina, projected to a massive size on a huge screen. Not only that, but the woman was holding her vagina wide open for an erect penis to enter her. The experience of watching this was, as I say, something of a novelty; but after about twenty minutes I did begin to wonder whether there might not be better ways to spend my time.

The point of this rather lengthy subsection of chapter 2.5.2 is to make it clear to you that, where sex is concerned, writers now have freedoms which were almost unimaginable barely fifty years ago. And it has all happened during my adult lifetime.

Yes, of course, the question of sexual descriptions in fiction is still controversial. In October 2013, there was a huge row about ‘offensive’ books being made available through… yes, you’ve guessed it, W.H. Smith’s online bookshop! What an irony. And you can expect similar rows to rumble on for ever more. There will always be those who regard sexual descriptions in books as the work of the devil, and if you write explicit fiction you should be prepared to have to answer for your actions from time to time.

As George R.R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones series) recently put it: ‘I can write a detailed description of an axe entering a man’s head, and there is no outcry. But if I write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, the world comes to an end.’

2.6 A snapshot of traditional publishing at the end of the twentieth century

2.6.1 The purpose of this book – a reminder

Please allow me to remind you, before we go any further, that the whole purpose of this book is to provide what its title says: A Writer’s Guide to Trade Publishing.

It is not an investor’s guide to publishing, or a history of publishing (except insofar as you need to have a bit of perspective on the business); and it is not a guide to copyright or the legal complications of publishing contracts (although, by whatever gods you hold dear, you will certainly need such a guide if you are ever offered a publishing deal).

No. This ebook is just one man’s view of the way things are, and how we got here. If I end up sounding thoroughly jaundiced about trade publishing, that’s because I’ve been dealing with publishing firms for fifty years, and have read more widely about the business than is good for me. I should have been writing instead.

As a result of that process, I have indeed ended up jaundiced, cynical, depressed, occasionally disgusted, and certainly disillusioned. Sorry about that, but that’s the way it’s gone for me. You may have better fortune if you ever dabble in trade publishing. Good luck with that.

So, that having been said, let’s take a quick snapshot of publishing at the end of the twentieth century.

2.6.2 The British publishing scene in perspective

Here is a summary of the UK publishing scene which I wrote for my book The Truth about Writing, published soon after the turn of the century. The position in America, or any other western nation, would be pretty much the same at that time; the American market is five or six times larger than the UK, but the proportions in every country would be about the same.

One of the problems that we face in getting an overview of British publishing (or any other country’s equivalent) is that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics about the book business. However, here is a broad-brush picture, drawn from reasonably reliable sources.

If we ignore academic/professional books and school textbooks, and just think about trade publishing, the consumer in 2000 was putting about £2 billion a year into the high-street tills.

That income from the consumer is, of course, divided. A largish chunk goes to the bookseller; he gets perhaps 35% of the retail price for a hardback, and more for a paperback. Another chunk, possibly 15%, may go to the wholesaler who supplied the bookseller. As a result, a publishing firm would be doing well if it managed to lay its hands on 50% of the money spent by the high-street book-buyer. In many companies they would be pleased to get 45%.

We may therefore assume that UK trade publishers were re earning about £1 billion a year.

At first sight this looks to be a huge sum. But, if you compare this figure with the income of companies in other industries, you will immediately see that, in commercial and industrial terms, publishing is a small business.

For example: the income of all the firms of solicitors (lawyers) in the UK is £11 billion a year; the Shell oil company has an income of about £100 billion, i.e. one hundred times as large as all UK trade publishers put together; and, in its 2000 published report, Barclays Bank recorded a profit of nearly £4 billion. And Barclays wasn’t even the biggest UK bank – it was the fourth biggest.

In addition to being a relatively small earner, publishing is also a small employer. Faber, one of the most famous names in the book world, at that time employed only 125 people. Even Hodder Headline, one of the top half-dozen firms, employed less than 800.

Compare these figures with almost any other industry and you will see that the numbers are tiny. In Wiltshire, where I was living in 2000, there is a small town called Trowbridge. The biggest employer in Trowbridge is a manufacturer of beds, called Airsprung. This firm employs 1,000 people, and you will certainly never have heard of it; in fact you probably haven’t even heard of Trowbridge.

In financial terms, trade publishing is not a rewarding business to work in. A Bookseller survey in 2001 established that the average salary paid to those aged between 19 and 23, who had been in their publishing jobs for less than a year, was £14,416. (Nearly all these firms are based in London, remember.)

In one medium-sized trade publisher, the overall average salary was just under £20,000, with the highest-paid director taking home some £45,000. By way of comparison, a train driver on the London underground was then earning about £31,000 a year. There are some publishing bosses who earn over £100,000 a year, but not many.

Because of its low earning power, and pathetic profit margins, publishing is of little interest to the City of London. Generally speaking, the industry provides a poor return on capital. A report published in 1999 stated that only 32% of publishers made an ‘acceptable’ return of 10% on their investment, and that about one third of publishers were ‘grossly inefficient’ in their use of capital.

In short, when we consider the financial data, coupled with employment statistics, we discover that publishing is a piddling little business of very little consequence to anyone. When compared with the oil industry, banking, or insurance, it is minuscule.

Publishing is, however, a business which is plays an absolutely vital part in what might be called the nation’s culture, and it has a central role in education. It also attracts a disproportionate amount of newspaper space; this misleads almost everyone into thinking that a well publicised book makes its author rich. Ah, if only!

2.6.2 A quick overview of how the new big firms were doing in the year 2000. These new big boys were going to make much bigger profits, you remember, than the multitude of smaller companies whom they had gobbled up. At least, that was the theory. (Excuse me while I have a quiet snigger.)

We noted above that, by the late 1990s, the process of amalgamation among publishing companies was well advanced, both in the UK and in the US.

In London, there were seven or eight companies which could each claim about 3 per cent or more of the general retail market. The biggest of these were Random House, Penguin, and HarperCollins. Companies which had once been owned by their eponymous founders (Gollancz, Deutsch, Weidenfeld), were now controlled by a curious mixture of ‘hard-headed’ businessmen. Of the largest companies, two were traded directly or indirectly on the London stock exchange, two were German-owned, one US-owned, one Australian, and one was the subsidiary of a French arms manufacturer.

In the US, the situation was perhaps even more obviously centralised. While there were many small publishers remaining – some of them started up because of the reduced costs associated with new printing methods (see below) – six big companies dominated the scene. For a decade or so these companies were referred to, with dazzling originality, as the Big Six.

The situation changes rapidly, and in 2013 the Big Six became the Big Five, through the merger of Penguin and Random House. So in order to avoid confusion I am going to describe the US Big Five/Six as they are at the time of writing (early 2014).

The firms concerned are Random House plus Penguin (now combined), Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hachette. Only two of the Big Six are US companies: Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins. The others are foreign: two are German, one is British and the other is French.

Some of these companies are quoted on the stock exchange, but it is an indication of the poor profit records of big-time publishers that most stock-market observers feel that the share prices of the parent companies of these firms would rise nicely if the parents dumped their children.

Simon & Schuster, a name to inspire ecstasy in the book world, is actually a drag on the share price of CBS. And Wall Street would like News Corp a whole lot better if it just sold HarperCollins.

Random House, once a proudly American company, is now owned by Bertelsmann, a firm which was once the largest publisher of Nazi propaganda; and, furthermore, the firm’s profits benefited from the slave labour provided to them by the Nazi party. But that was all a long time age, and in another country, so we won’t make a fuss about it now, will we? Wouldn’t quite be fair, would it?

From the point of view of would-be writers, none of this is good news. Once, well within my adult lifetime, a writer could reasonably send off her manuscript to as many as 30 publishers; and only if she was rejected by all of them would she need to question her faith that her wonderful book would definitely find a home soon. Today, you need an agent to get any of the powerful firms to look at your stuff at all. And perhaps it would only take three or four rejection letters to settle the matter in your agent’s mind.

Within the Big Five, well educated and well read men and women no longer make decisions about the value of novels and biographies. Calculations are instead made by TV-watching bean counters, possessing about as much culture as a hot dog and a can of beer.

In 1990, Random House was now run not by a literary chap, but by a former banker named Alberto Vitale. He was a man who boasted to all and sundry that he was far too busy ever to read a book. In that year, Vitale decided that he wanted to get rid of Andre Schiffrin, a long-standing and much admired head of a Random House literary division. To achieve this, Vitale simply ‘rearranged’ some Random House costs, charging Schiffrin’s division for expenses which had actually been incurred elsewhere. Schiffrin’s backlist of books, potentially a great asset, was written off at zero value. Result: Schiffrin was identified as a hopeless loser of the firm’s money. He was kicked out.

If that is how the big firms of today treat their distinguished staff, how interested do you think they are in the career of an unpublished writer such as yourself?

Even their published writers get what might politely be called the dirty end of the stick. Consider the fate of science-fiction writer Mary Doria Russell. Mary began to be published by Random House in 1996. She did five novels with them, winning an Arthur C. Clarke award and an ALA Readers Choice award. Entertainment Weekly chose her book The Sparrow as one of the ten best books of the year.

Just as her new novel Doc was released in 2011, Mary received word that Random House was not interested in any more books from her.

There had been no previous indication that this decision was forthcoming.

Fortunately, Doc was well reviewed and was chosen as one of the Washington Post’s top five novels of 2011. Now she is published by an imprint of HarperCollins. So all’s well – after a fashion. But after the Random House experience it took her, she says, about three months to breathe right. ‘I’d been so happy there. The sales people were great with me. But there was a lot of churning with editors. I’d had nine editors for my five novels.’ And what a lot of fun that must have been.

Moral of all this: In today’s world of the Big Five (or the Big One and four others, as some people think of it – it’s no good being a distinguished practitioner in a small-selling niche genre. Today you have to deliver blockbusters, on which everything depends, or else you’re out on your ear.

Mary Doria Russell has a web site with an ‘advice for aspiring authors’ section. It is essential reading for anyone reading this book.

And then there are those sneaky clauses in the big firm’s contract that you haven’t really noticed. In the very week that I wrote this section, a traditionally published author wrote a blog post under the title ‘Honesty post: an average traditionally published author’s pay.’

In this post, the author set out the full details of what she had earned over the previous three years with HarperCollins.

Within four hours, this post was taken down. Publishers, you see, don’t like it when an author reveals how pitifully small their earnings often are. It upsets the suckers who might otherwise offer them books.

The author later revealed that she had to take the post down for ‘contract disclosure reasons’.

Some publishers (probably all, come to think of it), insert a non-disclosure agreement into their contract. They don’t want authors talking about the money.

By 2000, the old publishing system was pretty much broke(n) anyway, and writers were not happy about it.

Luke Johnson, a former Chairman of Channel 4 television in the UK, had previously been a publisher. He described his time in that job as ‘a painful experience.’ Generally, he said, publishing is a ‘terrible business… a barely rational industry.’ And he was dead right, of course.

Across the Atlantic, experienced writers were feeling distinctly unhappy with the results of publishing’s travails over the previous decades. Warren Murphy, a well-known American writer who had written dozens of books and had won two Edgars (crime fiction’s Oscars), described how he had yet to be paid for his latest book (which was then in the shops). ‘In the old world of publishing,’ said Murphy, ‘writers always come last.’ And he wasn’t talking about sex. He was talking about getting paid.

Murphy went on to forecast the death of publishing, as currently constituted. ‘Editors who can’t edit... bookkeeping practices that would befuddle Stephen Hawking... an industry whose business practices were old a hundred years ago and dumb even earlier than that.’

And it wasn’t just the commercially minded writers who were fed up. In 2001 V.S. Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. But a few years earlier he has given an interview in which he said, ‘My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world, is an extraordinarily shoddy, dirty, dingy world. There are probably only three or four publishers in London that one has any regard for. The others have the morality and the culture of barrow boys – street sellers, people pushing rotten apples.’

But, round about the end of the twentieth century, change was in the air. Whether publishers knew it or not it, change was rolling inexorably along.

2.6.3 Two aspects of the coming change

In late 1999, publishing stood on the edge of two revolutions. Both of them were essentially technological.

On the one hand, it was readily apparent, at least to anyone who was paying any serious attention, that a major change in printing technology, as opposed to, say, book distribution and retailing, was already under way.

Printing had remained more or less the same process since Gutenberg in 1450. In 1810, the use of steam to power the presses had been introduced; ;this enabled them to work much faster and thus reduce costs. But since then, nothing new. Type was still set in lead, and after the first edition of the book was printed you still had to decide whether to store the trays of lead (expensive), or to allow the metal to be melted down.

But now… In the late 1990s, a technique known as Print on Demand (POD) was already widely available, and about to become more so.

POD was a computer-based technique. Text was entered on to a computer’s hard drive, along with a thousand or two other books, and when you wanted a copy – yes, even a single copy – you just pressed a key and a glorified Xerox machine printed one off for you.

Time: about fifteen minutes.

Result: massive reduction in printing costs. Less investment required, less risk. For a book which needed a first printing of a million copies in paperback, the old way of printing was still cheaper; but the approach of massive change was nevertheless readily apparent.

Apparent, that is, and as I said earlier, to anyone who was paying attention. Most people in publishing weren’t doing that. And even if they sensed the coming of change they were determined to prevent it.

Around the turn of the century, Jason Epstein wrote a book entitled Book Business; it was published 2001 in the US. This book was an examination of present practice in publishing, and a far-sighted glimpse into the future. Epstein was unusually well qualified to write such a book, because he had been editorial director of Random House, in New York, for forty years.

It was also around the turn of the century that I myself, in England, was setting up small company of my own, mainly to publish my own books, under a variety of pen-names; I intended to take full advantage of the new POD technology. This project involved me talking to wholesalers, printers, booksellers, other publishers, library staff, and, not least, readers. Wherever I went I asked as many people as I could whether they had read Epstein’s Book Business. I never found anyone who had.

This did not surprise me, because by then I had concluded that the people who worked in the book business were, as individuals, a pleasure to know, people whom you would welcome as neighbours, and perhaps even as suitors for your daughter’s hand. But as professionals, profit-makers, long-term business strategists – absolutely hopeless. Clueless beyond redemption.

Even when his book was published, Epstein had already concluded that successful writers didn’t need publishers at all. People like Stephen King and Danielle Steel, with massively successful track records, could quite easily have cut free from agents and publishers, and could have bought in such talent as they needed, in terms of editors, book designers, printers, book distributors, and so forth. By doing so they would probably have earned a great deal more at the end of the day. In practice, however, at that stage, they all chose to continue doing things the old way – but that was presumably because it suited their convenience to do so. (Either that or they weren’t paying any attention either.)

Epstein was a big POD fan, and he predicted a situation whereby a simple coffee shop on your local high street might have a printing machine parked at the back. You would come in the door, order a coffee of your choice, and then order the latest J.K. Rowling to take out with you fifteen minutes later. That arrangement has not quite come to fruition yet, but there is now a contract in force between Xerox and Kodak to run such a facility through the Kodak photographic printing shops.

2.6.3 The beginning of ebooks

A second game-changing development was already being thought about by the few enterprising publishers who were not totally ignorant of computer technology. This was the prospect of reading books on a computer screen rather than on paper. It was the coming of electronic books, or ebooks as we now think of them.

Consider, by way of example, the US firm Renaissance E Books, which was founded in 1997. This firm was undoubtedly one of the earliest publishers of ebooks on the web. In 2003, shortly before his death, the original founder of the company sold the business to a consortium which appointed a well known publishing editor named Jean Marie Stine to run the show. And run it she did, very well.

Shortly after Jean Marie took charge, I signed a number of contracts with Renaissance to publish some of my own books in digital formats (long before the Kindle, please notice); these contracts were models of their kind.

In the early days, ebooks were mostly sold in pdf format. But you didn’t have to be very bright to see that, as soon as a really efficient and easily portable ebook reader was developed, something that you could carry around in your pocket or handbag, the sale of ebooks would really take off. More of that later.

2.6.4 Summary

The purpose of section 2.6 has been to gain an overview of trade publishing at the very end of the twentieth century.

Publishing firms are first and foremost businesses. That is to say, their purpose is to make money for the shareholders. As such, their performance has always been somewhere between awful and pitiful. For an examination of British publishers, seen from this perspective, please see Eric de Bellaigue’s 2004 book, British Book Publishing as a Business since the 1960s.

The brutal truth is that twentieth-century trade publishing’s business model was so weak that it was always going to have trouble in avoiding collapse; and, in the early years of the twenty-first century, change began to come about at an amazing speed. Traditional book publishing, which had barely been able to stagger along financially even without much challenge, was now going to find it very hard to cope.

The final outcome of the battle between traditional and digital is not yet known (see Part Three, which follows). But one thing is certain. You could hardly find a group of people less well qualified to cope with rapid technological developments than those who worked in book publishing in the year 2000.

PART 3: FINAL THOUGHTS – Will traditional publishing survive? And do writers really need it anyway?

3.1 The impact of the digital age

This book is being written in 2014, roughly fifteen years since the turn of the century, a period which we dealt with in Part Two. Part Three therefore looks at the impact of technology on the publishing business during the crucial years since 2000.

Like it or not – and some people hate it – the last ten years in particular have seen massive changes in the publishing industry, and it is instructive to compare what has happened there to what happened in other industries which were transformed by digital techniques.

Consider the business of photography. You can hardly fail to have noticed that these days everyone from the age of six upwards has a digital camera. And you’ve probably noticed that old-fashioned film has almost vanished from the shops. Grandma no longer carries a boasting book full of snapshots of her grandchildren: instead she has an iPad or a tablet, and she whizzes through the piccies by swiping her fingers across a screen.

What you may not have noticed, unless you’re very keen on photography, is that all this changed within just a very few years. More to the point, some hugely famous photographic firms simply went out of business – they were swept away by the surge of digital change. Legendary companies such as Polaroid, Bronica, Contax, Agfa, Konica, Minolta and Ilford all withered and died.

Christian Sandstrom did some research into what caused this commercial catastrophe; and he established that it wasn’t because the companies ignored digital developments. Far from it. They tried to get in the game. But they failed because their hard-won skills and business experience became irrelevant in the new market. One Hasselblad employee told Sandstrom that he could never have imagined that the shift would happen so fast and with such implications. Fundamentally, the older photographic companies failed because their core competence was not related to electronics, and because they were overtaken by the speed of events.

Plenty of other industries have been struggling to deal with digital change, and some research on this phenomenon has been done in academia, notably by Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen.

A major example, in an industry which is vastly greater in size and importance than book publishing, is the crisis which hit the manufacturers of mainframe computers, when the manufacturers of minicomputers came on the scene. And these manufacturers of minicomputers were in turn threatened by the manufacturers of personal computers; and tablets, and smartphones, and all like that.

The principal problem is that digital developments make everything cheaper. Consumers love this, but it creates serious problems for those who were doing things the old way, and would really like to go on doing things the old way, thank you very much.

The existing firms have to be really, really smart to survive. And do big publishers strike you as being really, really smart? Come on now, it’s a serious question.

The researchers tell us that almost nobody from the old order is able to undertake the necessary changes to survive in the new order. When the world changes and the industry doesn’t, the industry tends to disappear.

So, where does that leave traditional book publishing?

In trouble, that’s where. Anything further away from electronic competence than a modern publishing company would be pretty hard to find; and, as we all know, they are not exactly quick on their feet either. So, as the years went by, many observers, such as myself, began to feel that old-fashioned trade publishing might soon die the death. To tell the truth, we weren’t too bothered by that thought.

Well, disaster for the Big Five (and others) hasn’t quite happened. Not yet. But the dinosaurs in publishing are doing their best to help it along. It took them a long time to work out how to send emails, not so very long ago, and surely a web page wasn’t really necessary, was it? Just a fad. Would never catch on.

Watch this space.

3.2 How to sell a book to a traditional publisher

Here’s how the business worked at the end of the twentieth century, from a writer’s point of view. And this is how it still works. Sort of. ‘Works’ is a relative term.

Writer spends hundreds of hours working on a novel. Possibly from 1990 to 1995, let’s say. Then, in 1996, the author tries to approach publishers – only to find that they mostly don’t consider books sent in by nobodies. Even those firms which do accept submissions resort to some interesting dodges.

The Galleycat blog reported that some firms invent fake editors, who send out rejection letters on the firm’s behalf. One editor reported that, ‘A company that I worked at in the ’90s not only sent out rejection letters under a fake editor’s name, but this fake editor also had a voicemail box and an e-mail address.’ If a writer complains about her treatment, she can be told that Mr Smith has left the company.

So, not getting anywhere with a direct approach, our writer sets out to find a literary agent who can approach one of publishing’s gatekeepers without said gatekeeper collapsing into tears of laughter. Agent, once found, and once convinced that he has something which might, with luck, prove acceptable, sends the book to his bestest best pal. Pal accepts. Book published! Reviewers love it! Bookshops stack it on the front desk. Fame and fortune follow! Hurrah. Nobel prize and any others of note are awarded without argument. No contest. Big interviews on TV and in major newspapers. Your neighbours beg you to come to dinner. In your chauffeured Rolls Royce

And, again, all like that.

That’s what you imagine. But of course, that isn’t the way it goes.

The search for an agent can take years. Even when found, the agent suggests changes. These take months, if not years. Despair sets in, but you struggle through.

Revised book is sent out. Gets rejected. Often takes years to find an editor who is interested.

When found, the editor wants changes. Funnily enough, she wants our writer to change things back to the way they were in the first version (though the editor doesn’t know that). After more tears, break-up with boyfriend because he never sees you, you do the changes. Agent sends off new version. Editor sends a note to say she is leaving the company and her replacement doesn’t like the book. Sorry.

After two or three iterations of this, hardly ever taking more than about a decade, you actually get offered a contract. Wow! At last! Virtue, hard work and obsession are finally rewarded. Terms of contract seem a bit harsh, but you decide not to argue. You yearn to be published.

Months pass. No one talks to you about anything – agent and editor all too busy. Then one day, you receive a set of proofs. To be read, corrected and returned overnight please. You struggle to comply. Send back proofs. Further months pass. A printed copy of the book arrives. You hate the cover. Wasn’t there something in the contract about cover approval? Yes, says agent, but no one takes that seriously, and in any case the dust jackets are all printed now.

Publication day arrives. Nothing happens. No launch party, no reviews for months, the bookshop near your home has never heard of your book and doesn’t want to stock it when you describe it.

Contract calls for another book. You repeat the process. Same thing happens: i.e. nothing. One day agent sends an email to say that sales have been disappointing and publisher doesn’t want you any more. Given this, says agent, and the general state of the market, the agent doesn’t want you any more either.

End of ‘career’. But it’s all been such fun, hasn’t it? You wouldn’t have missed it for the worlds, would you?

You think I exaggerate, don’t you? Ah, if you only knew. That’s the optimistic version.

At the moment you think this is just me, being nasty and cynical and bitter. Well, one day you may find out. The hard way. Or maybe not, if you’re smart.

3.3 How the Kindle changed everything

On 19 November 2007, Amazon released the Kindle. The Kindle was the first little computer thingy which was designed principally for reading ebooks, and there must have been a bunch of people out there waiting for it because it sold out in five and a half hours. Even at $399. The device remained out of stock for the next five months.

But how did this affect writers? Dramatically is the answer.

Prior to 2007 it had always been possible for a writer to publish a book herself, in traditional printed form. It was very easy, provided you were prepared to throw lots of money around. The difficult thing was selling your book to readers.

Bookshops would not want it, even if you could get access to some reliable distribution system. So as often as not you gave away 100 copies to your family and friends and stored the other 9,900 in your garage. Where they stayed for the next ten years, until you finally accepted the inevitable and paid to have them carted away for pulping.

But now, with the advent of the Kindle, Amazon made it possible for anyone – literally anyone – to publish their own ebook. And how much did it cost? Nothing. Oh yes, you could spend money on professional editing and proof-reading if you wished, pay for it to be formatted and for a fancypants cover design, but you didn’t have to pay for any of that. You could do it all yourself. And how much did a DIY job cost you? Nothing. Not a penny.

Furthermore – and this is the almost incredible part – Amazon actually want you to publish your book through their facilities. There are no editors asking you to rewrite the end, and while you’re at it, cut 20,000 words out of the whole thing. Instead, you can publish anything you damn well please, and welcome, from a one-page poem to a 250,000-word literary masterpiece in the style of James Joyce.

Yes, it is true that a book about perverts having sex with children and dogs will probably get you unpublished by Amazon. And too much scatological libel about much loved public figures will likewise raise a few eyebrows in the Amazon office. But anything that is within reason, and a good deal that isn’t, will generally be accepted.

Just by way of example, some two or three years ago I came across an author who was publishing short novellas of about 10,000 words. These were selling about 2,500 copies a month – despite the fact that the lady could not spell or punctuate to save her life. No traditional publisher’s reader would have read more than one paragraph of her work. But on Kindle she could publish and sell.

And who, you might reasonably ask, was buying such semi-literate rubbish? Answer, people who were semi-literate themselves, but liked to be told a good story. And they were reading these books on their smartphones. These readers didn’t care about the spelling and the punctuation, because they were never much good at that stuff at school, and they aren’t about to start being fussy about it now. Just tell us a story, please Miss, and we’ll be very grateful.

In a space of about five years, it became obvious to even the slowest-witted readers, writers and publishers, that the advent of the Kindle (and similar devices) meant that publishing had just undergone the most massive change since the invention of printing.

I’m not going to try to give you any precise idea of the numbers of published books these days, because the data on book output are now unreliable. I will merely point out that in January 2012 David Houle told a conference that: ‘There were more books published this week than there were in all of 1950.’ He may not have been dead right, even to the nearest 10, but he was in the right ball park.

In 1990, there were some 25,000 books published in the US, and the only certain thing is that numbers since then have increased enormously. The growth has been powered mainly by the fact that new printing technology has made it possible for authors to publish their own books at vastly reduced cost.

According to Bowker, which is the firm that handles ISBN numbers and other bibliographical data, about 344,000 printed book were published in 2011, and 43 per cent of these were self-published. In addition, at least 87,000 ebooks were self-published. These numbers are probably lower than the true figures.

Formerly, the gates to publication had been locked tight. You needed a triple password, an endorsement from a multiple bestseller and a note from your Mum before anyone would even listen to your plea for admission. But now – Amazon has opened a new set of gates round the back. These gates are kept permanently open. And there is a big sign over the top which says, ‘Come on in, the water’s lovely. We don’t care if you’re not much cop at spelling, and there are certainly readers out there who don’t know a semi-colon from a cold in the head. All you need, to find readers, is a bit of a story – try it out, at our expense, and see if anyone likes it.’

Incidentally, when it comes to bestsellers in ebooks, the most successful publishers, in 2013, were unsurprisingly drawn from the Big Five. Using appearances on the Digital Book World ebook bestseller list as our criterion, Hachette, Penguin, and Random House did best. But, if we imagine self-published authors as forming one indie publishing firm, the indie authors beat everyone else. Beat HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, et al.

Unless you have spent the past fifty years struggling through the treacle fields which defended the old system, as I have, new writers cannot possibly imagine what a gift from the gods has been vouchsafed to you in this, the digital age. The best advice I can give to any writer is this: for your own sake, make the most of this breathtaking opportunity; and as you do so, give thanks to whatever gods you fancy that you live in such blessed times.

3.4 The coffee-shop printing machine

And what, you may be wondering, of that other digital development which was forecast by Jason Epstein around the turn of the century?

Epstein, you may recall, predicted that before long there would be machines on every High Street (possibly in coffee shops, hence the name Espresso Book Machine) which would print you a copy of almost any book within a few minutes. Well, we’re nearly there.

In September 2012 it was announced that the Espresso Book Machine developers would be co-operating with Eastman Kodak to incorporate these machines in Kodak Picture Kiosks in up to 105,000 locations worldwide.

And if you haven’t actually seen such a machine yet, neither have I. So it’s no good pretending that this innovation has had the massive impact of the Kindle. Neither do I think it ever will. It may never prove to be a viable business model. But the idea isn’t dead yet, and there are still quite a few people around who like the concept.

Suppose you’ve just read a cracking good novel and you think your Aunty Jane would love a printed copy for her birthday. Or, more precisely, when you meet her later on today. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if you could get one printed in your lunch hour?

3.5 Success stories of the digital age

When you join the self-publishing community (the indie-publishers), you will be joining some eminent company. In 2010, the marketing guru Seth Godin, author of 12 print bestsellers which have been translated into 33 languages, announced that in future he will no longer work through traditional publishers. He argues that, in an ebook world, there are viable ways of cutting publishers out of the loop out (a process known as disintermediation). Now he can reach people just as effectively, if not more so, without traditional publishers, and end up making more money.

Prior to coming to this conclusion, Seth had been talking to many established print publishers and he was unimpressed by what he found. ‘Most of them looked at me like I was nuts for being an optimist. One CEO worked as hard as she could to restrain herself, but failed and almost threw me out of her office by the end. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken at the fear I saw.’

But there’s no need for writers to be afraid. Quite the reverse. As I shall now demonstrate.

Before I move on to describe some success stories, let me say that successful writers have always been the exception. By a huge margin. And this is true however you care to define the word ‘successful’.

Success for some people simply means getting an article printed in a magazine. Or winning the local writers’ group monthly competition for a ten-line poem. For others, it means selling more copies than Stephen King and Danielle Steel combined. Either way, success is unusual. And it must not be considered inevitable. It is not a case of just do this, followed by that, and plug it on Twitter and Facebook, and you are bound to hit the big time. Never was, never will be.

Nevertheless, it is an established fact that some talented writers have not only managed to use their talent in the digital age, but have also had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time with the right book.

The runaway successes of the digital age have been widely publicised, and I am not going to do much more here than mention some of their names, just in case you are a newbie to this game and have not come across them before. You might like to look at these writers’ web sites and other blog posts et cetera about them.

To begin with, it’s worth noting that Amazon itself often publicises the self-publishing successes, in order to encourage others to use their Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. In early 2012, for instance, Amazon published a list of the top ten bestsellers on its site in 2011, combining the sales of both print and ebook versions. Of these ten books, two were novels which were available in ebook form only. And – vital point – both these books were self-published. I’d never heard of either of them until I saw the Amazon list. One was The Mill River Recluse, at number four, and the other was The Abbey, at number nine.

The Mill River Recluse is by Darcie Chan. And when you look this lady up you find that hers is an absolutely classic story of the digital age. It took her three years to complete the book, after which she tested it out on her family and friends, polished it up, and sent it out to traditional publishers. Got absolutely nowhere. Scores of rejections. Sent it out to dozens of agents, with the same result. Then one top-class agent took her on (Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord). Laurie sent the book to all her best contacts, over a further two-year period. But still no sale.

By that time Darcie had become aware of this new-fangled digital self-publishing business. So she gave it a try. Edited the book herself, did her own formatting, designed her own cover, and handled her own publicity.

The book was published in May 2011. In June, she was thrilled when 100 copies had been sold. After that, aided by some hard work on marketing, and a little bit of advertising, things began to snowball, until in the latter part of the year the book was selling several thousand copies a day.

This book was, it’s worth repeating, the fourth biggest-selling book on the whole of Amazon in 2011, with no paper edition at all.

Other famous self-publishers include Amanda Hocking, John Locke (the eighth author, and the first self-published one, to sell over 1 million ebooks on Amazon), and Hugh Howey.

What distinguishes these books and their authors from ten thousand others? Ah, if only we knew. All we can say, with any confidence, is that sometimes a book will find its readers and really take off. But mostly it won’t.

3.6 Two-way traffic in the digital age

An interesting phenomenon in the digital age is the two-way traffic between traditional publishing and indie publishing.

At a certain point, some indie publishers who do absolutely everything themselves have come to the conclusion that they will never have any free time, never live a normal life, until they find someone to help out with the everyday stuff.

Amanda Hocking, for example, was eventually offered $2 million by St Martin’s Press, to enter into a conventional publishing arrangement with them. And why did she sign?

‘I want to be a writer,’ said Amanda. ‘I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc.’ In other words, she wants someone to do the manual labour for her.

Conversely, some famous writers have finally accepted the point made by Jason Epstein in Book Business, namely that they don’t really need a publisher at all. If they already have experience of the publishing process, they can hire in the help as necessary. Barry Eisler, a thriller writer whose track record includes a Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, actually turned down a new contract with St Martin’s Press, worth $500,000, and decided to control his own fate thereafter, as an indie.

Further down the famous and successful list, consider the experience of Elisabeth Naughton

Elisabeth is a really interesting case-study, because she began her career in traditional publishing, working through well-known mass-market firms such as Dorchester and Sourcebooks. Elisabeth was never a big seller. She was what’s known as a mid-list author; or even lower on the chain. Her contracts were, as she puts it, crappy, but hey – she was a published writer, OK? Respect! Prestige! Money! She had all the accolades of being a published author – her books were on bookstore shelves and in airports, she was getting rave reviews, she was a top seller in romance for Sourcebooks, and she even hit the USA Today bestsellers list.

But actually Elisabeth found that she was spending more money on promoting her books than she was earning in royalties. She used to go to romance readers’ conferences and mix with the fans, spending money on air fares and hotels. And she spent money on promotional materials. So, after careful thought, she backed away from traditional publishing. She got her rights back from Dorchester and became an indie publisher.

Tucked away on her hard drive Elisabeth had an unpublished book called Wait for Me. This novel had been rejected by several literary agents because, as they put it, it straddled genres. But Elisabeth believed in it, and published it herself in ebook form. Wait for Me then proceeded to hit every major ebook bestseller list, and it continues to sell very well.

In 2011, Elisabeth’s tax return showed negative income: in other words, her expenses as a writer amounted to more than she earned. In 2012, as a self-publisher, she reported six figures on the positive side; in 2013 she was approaching the seven-figure mark. But remember – she wrote for ten years without making a penny when expenses were taken into account.

In the UK, another writer, Janet MacLeod Trotter, has done much the same thing. In 2012, Janet’s novel The Tea Planter’s Daughter was one of the top ten bestselling Kindle ebooks on Amazon.co.uk. And it’s particularly interesting because this book has history.

The clue to its history was provided by a statement, on the Amazon page for the book, that it was long-listed for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2008. So it obviously wasn’t a new book in 2012.

I wanted to know more, and my first research stop was the catalogue of my local library. A search here reveals that this book was first published by Headline in 2007, when it had the title The Tea Planter’s Lass; a paperback came from Headline a year later. (Just in case you’re new to this business, let me say that Headline is a major UK publisher of commercial fiction, and many authors would give a couple of teeth to be put on their list.) In addition to the hardback and paperback editions, there are also CD and cassette versions of a talking-book edition, and a large-print edition from Magna.

If you move on to Janet MacLeod Trotter’s own web site, it turns out that she is the author of 16 books which were published through Headline, beginning in 1993; most of these fall into the family saga or women’s fiction category. She also writes crime fiction under the name J.M. MacLeod.

Furthermore – and this is where it begins to get really interesting – Janet’s web site tells us that she now runs a ‘micro publishing business, specialising in paperbacks and ebooks.’ Its name is MacLeod Trotter Books (MTB).

Back to Amazon again, and we find that MTB has 34 books on its list, including the ones previously published by Headline. And Headline, for its part, no longer lists Janet’s name on its list of authors.

So. The 2012 list of Amazon indie-author successes contains an author who has now seen the digital light, dropped all connection with old-time publishing, and reissued a ‘dead’ book five years later. By giving it a new title and a new cover (using a family photograph), Janet has turned the novel into a top-ten ebook bestseller. In addition, she’s self-publishing new editions of all her old output, in both digital and paperback versions, through her own imprint.

3.7 The future of traditional publishing

Today, every blog and every book-world discussion forum is full of speculation about the book-publishing world. Will the Big Five publishers (as they are now) go the way of the famous names in photography, and collapse into insolvency? And if so, when?

I am not going to add to this speculation. If you seek evidence, to argue for survival and continued prosperity on the one hand, or an early demise on the other, it is difficult to find anything really convincing. The Big Five put out profit reports which indicate continued success. But then they would do that, wouldn’t they? Immediately prior to collapse, and the demand for government bailouts, all the big banks were very optimistic in their public statements. And likewise you can find analysts who see nothing but decline in the Big Five figures – such of them as they believe. We shall see.

What I will say is that fiction, in particular, lends itself beautifully to the ebook medium. And if you are a novelist you would be unwise, in my opinion, to bother with anything other than self-publication. On the other hand, if you are an academic historian and wish to publish a learned volume embodying the results of your ten years of research into the causes of the first world war, then your best plan is undoubtedly to woo one of the long-established university presses, and to seek publication in printed form (probably with maps and photographs, which ebooks really can’t cope with).

The only other thing I will add is that writers are assuredly noticing that publishers are behaving as if they need to conserve money. Faced with the possibility of economic disaster, publishers are offering much reduced advances against royalties. Furthermore, the blogger and novelist M.J. Rose reports from New York that publishers are now looking to writers to provide their own marketing budget! This is being dressed up as an investment in their own talent. And are the publishers offering a larger royalty as compensation for this investment? Are they heck. Instead they’re complaining that authors always got too much of the money anyway. This proposed financial ‘investment’, please note, is on top of the investment of time and energy which writers are already expected to put in by giving interviews and lectures, attending signing sessions, and so forth.

For insight into the future, take a look at what such big names in publishing consultancy as Clay Shirky, Jason Epstein, and Mike Shatzkin have been saying recently (Google will help). What you will find is that they offer a bewildering variety of forecasts. But one thing they are agreed on: the traditional book-publishing model is broken. Says Shatzkin, with reference to firms such as Random House and Hachette, ‘That kind of publishing can’t exist a lot longer.’ Certainly, no group of businesses which currently stand between an author and her readers can afford to be complacent; that includes agents, publishers, printers, wholesalers, and bookshops.

Why are publishing strategists gathering together in forums such as the annual Tools of Change for Publishing conference? Answer, because vast sums of money will shortly be made or lost, depending on how smart you are. All you have to do is figure out how to create a new internet-based entity which will provide a really efficient service for readers, writers and digital publishers. Fortunes will be earned by the smart thinkers; bankruptcy will be the lot of those who miscalculate.

3.8 What’s a poor writer to do?

If you’ve read as far as this, you are presumably a writer of some sort, and you’re probably interested in full-length fiction. You’ve been brought up to feel that you really won’t be able to hold your head up in polite society unless you’re published in printed-book form, preferably hardback, and visibly on sale in every bookshop that your family and friends are ever likely to go into.

Well, fair enough. It’s a point of view. It was mine once. And if that’s the way you want to go, buy yourself a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook (UK) or Writer’s Market (US) and plunge in.

But there is an alternative, and the alternative is to become a self-publisher, or indie publisher. Start with Kindle, read up all the advice that Amazon offers you (and there’s a lot of it), and go your own way.

If you’re smart enough to have written a novel, or even if you’ve just idly found this present ebook on someone’s tablet, you are certainly smart enough to figure out how to format an ebook. You’ve got the hang of email and Word, haven’t you? You know about RSS feeds, Paypal, stuff like that? OK, so you can format an ebook, if you apply your mind to it.

You can design your own cover too. Amazon offers you a fairly simply way to do it. Or you can make your own. Just download some free photo-editing software (GIMP will do nicely), or pay for Photoshop Elements, which is what I use. Yes, it does take time to learn how to use such a program, and you need to practise, but the more you do the easier it becomes. Nothing new about that. Same with the main part of the enterprise, which is writing a novel.

Then… when you’ve done all that, when your indie book is out before the admiring public, you sit back and wait.

If nothing much happens, you write some more and do it again. In fact you should write some more anyway, while you’re waiting. But if, by the grace of whatever gods may be, you find a million or two readers, and attract a little bit of attention, then maybe an agent, or even a publisher, will approach you. And that’s much the best way round.

3.9 Contracts are nasty… (insert rude noun of choice)

It is a fact that, for well over a hundred years, book publishers have been blessed by the existence of a huge number of mugs, suckers, and assorted fuzzy thinkers, who have been willing to work for a year or two, to produce a full-length manuscript on spec, without a penny piece to show for it. These would-be authors then dispatch their manuscript to a publisher, or an agent, who in a noticeable number of cases proceeds to lose it; but even when the recipient keeps track of it, it is only to send the thing back, after a modest delay of six months or so, with a scrappy piece of paper saying ‘Sorry – not quite what we are looking for.’

So shabby and disgraceful is the industry’s treatment of its authors that it is a small miracle, if truth be told, that publishers (and agents) are not daily visited by a small gang of infuriated slush-pile rejects, brandishing iron bars and sawn-off shotguns, demanding to see ‘that son of a bitch who wrote this letter.’

However, let us assume, for a paragraph or two, that at some stage you are actually offered a contract with a ‘reputable’ publisher.

Contracts require a whole book of their own, and there are a few such books available if you poke around in the bibliographies and search engines. I could have written one myself once – in fact, with my publisher’s hat on, I wrote a few actual contracts in times past – but I’m not going to go into great detail on contracts here because I feel I am out of date.

I will, however, offer a few broad-brush remarks.

In the US there is a lawyer who specialises in contracts for the entertainment media, and whose wife is an indie publisher. The lawyer’s name is David Vandagriff, and he writes a blog called The Passive Voice. Here’s what he has to say about book contracts: ‘After having reviewed many, many agreements and proposed agreements between traditional publishers and authors, [I am] prepared to say these contracts, as a group, stand apart from the general run of business agreements as conscience-shocking monstrosities. They’re simply designed to screw authors and to give publishers control over their work that is far beyond what is regarded as reasonable in the rest of American business.’ (The UK is no different, by the way.)

You should also read what experienced authors such as Dean Wesley Smith and his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch have to say on this issue. Both of them run blogs (see Appendix at the end of this book).

You should certainly keep an eye on a web site called Writer Beware. This is run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and we all owe them a great debt. They have much to say on contracts with traditional publishers, and little of it is complimentary.

Here are a few small pointers to the kind of problems you might encounter. Just examples.

At some time, perhaps even twenty years after signing a contract, you might want to bring the contract to an end, and reclaim rights which you once granted. But, in the present state of things, you won’t be able to do that unless the publisher is sick to death of you, in which case you will have been dumped years ago.

Modern publishers, as I have repeatedly said, are pretty damn clueless at running a business efficiently. But one point I will grant them: they are remarkably good at writing contracts which lock you to their bosom for ever – if they actually want to keep you.

The reversion clause, as it’s called, will be well-nigh unbreakable. You won’t be able to get your rights back.

Then there’s a clause which prevents you from offering anything to another publisher which might compete with the book you’ve sold to them (sold it for ever, as you now know). So, if you’re a big success as a romance writer, you may not be able to write any more romances for another publisher because the contract forbids it. It’s usually called a non-competition clause, or something similar.

And then, at some point, you might receive notice of an addendum to the contract, sent to you through the post, or by email. You will be asked to sign it.

One thing can be guaranteed: this addendum won’t make the contract any more favourable to you. Beware of addenda.

And then, of course, because big publishing is finding it increasingly difficult to make profits in the old way, or even in the new way, they have begun to dabble in cunning plans. If it’s hard to get customers to buy their books, why not scrounge money out of the writers? After all, if they’re dumb enough to spend years writing a book and are desperate to get into print under the name of a famous and once reputable company, offer them the chance to do so! For a fee, of course.

In 2012, Penguin bought a firm called Author Solutions. This firm was well known for providing self-publishing services to writers – services for which they charged large sums of money. Want a ‘web-optimised press release’ for your book? Certainly, sir or madam: that will be $1,199 please.

Prior to the Penguin purchase, the 150,000 customers of Author Solutions were charged an average of $5,000 and on average sold 150 books.

In the same year, Simon & Schuster set up a subsidiary called Archway Publishing, which they planned to run in conjunction with… yes, you guessed it, our old familiar friends Author Solutions. With prices starting at $1600, Archway would do for authors that which they could perfectly well do for themselves for nothing, namely publish an ebook edition.

Book-trade commentators were unimpressed. One such, Nate Hoffelder, wrote as follows:

‘Author Solutions might be currently owned by Penguin, a detail which does not speak well for Penguin’s business ethics, but there is no sign that they have cleaned up their act. All we are seeing today is that Author Solutions is merely offering the same scammy deals as they always have, only this time they get to do so under the formerly good name of Simon & Schuster.’

Frankly, I grow weary of listing even a sample of the pitfalls of mixing with traditional publishers. So let me end by telling you that I once wrote a book called The Truth about Writing. The first paragraph of that book ran as follows:

‘Writing is an activity which can seriously damage your health. It can consume huge amounts of time and energy, and it can lead to frustration, rage, and bitterness.’ The overall purpose of The Truth about Writing was, I said, ‘to protect and preserve the sanity of anyone who is unfortunate enough to be afflicted with the ambition to write.’

What was true of my earlier book is true of this one – the one that you’re reading right now.

Above all, folks, try to have fun when you’re writing. If it isn’t fun, write something else. Or do something else, such as taking long walks in the country.

And while we all like a little success from time to time, success can be modest and yet rewarding. Read my essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile, and learn how to work to professional standards while remaining an amateur. You will be an amateur only in the sense that you please yourself what you write, you control your own work in every detail, and you don’t have to deal with traditional publishers. Or try to decode their disgusting contracts.

You can be the mistress of your own fate now, and you couldn’t once. Not until very recently, in fact. So make the most of your new-found freedom.

Hugh Howey, a digital self-publishing winner, estimates that when the Kindle was first sold there might have been (generous estimate) about 1,000 people in the US making a good living out of their fiction. Self-publishing, he thinks, has tripled or quadrupled that figure.

You might even be one of them, one day.

Good luck along the way.

APPENDIX

This appendix consists of a list of blogs about books. There are hundreds of such blogs, but if you start with the ones listed here, and read them on a regular basis, you will soon acquire a thorough knowledge of publishing in all its various forms.

It’s not easy to explain to you how lucky you are to be working as a writer in an era when this sort of information is readily available. It certainly wasn’t when I started out. Dozens of experienced writers, agents, lawyers, and – yes – even publishers, are making their knowledge and judgements available to you entirely free of charge.

That having been said, some of the bloggers are not too proud to ask you to leave a cash tip if you find a post of theirs particularly helpful. I have done so more than once, even after fifty years in the business, and so should you.

If you are flush with cash, you might care to subscribe to the two main trade journals of the book-publishing world. In the UK, you need The Bookseller. Current subscription rates are £196 p.a. if you live in the UK, £264 if you live elsewhere. In the US, the equivalent is Publishers Weekly, which will set you back $249 for a one-year print + digital subscription, and $399 if you live outside the US. (Digital-only rates for PW are cheaper.)

But wait. Before you rush off to subscribe to either of these two magazines, bear in mind that there may be a library near you which already subscribes, and makes their copy available to the general public. So try that first; it’s a lot cheaper.

The blogs listed below are not in any particular order.

Books Inq. The thoughts of an old literary journalist and his friends.

The Passive Voice. David Vandagriff, media lawyer.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Joe Konrath, a big-time digital success, tells how he does it.

Blog of a Bookslut. Pretty much what it says on the label.

Caustic Cover Critic. Ditto.

David Gaughran. Modern author with forthright views.

Dean Wesley Smith. Author of over 100 novels. A man who works unhealthily hard and tells it like it is.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean’s wife, and amazingly knowledgeable about contracts and other trade secrets.

Digital Book World. Some very well informed commentators.

Mediabistro.com: EbookNewser.

Mediabistro.com: Galleycat. The bit that deals with traditional publishing.

The Digital Reader. The one really essential guide to the new digital universe.

Writer Beware: The Blog.

The Literary Saloon. Deals mainly with literary books, and those translated into English.

The Shatzkin files. Mike Shatzkin, experienced publishing consultant. His Dad was also a major figure in traditional publishing.

Grumpy Old Bookman. Finally, this one is my own. Between 2004 and 2007 I wrote about 1.25 million words on this blog: reviews, news, comment, advice. There’s a lot of good stuff there if you search for it. Since 2007, I have been only an occasional blogger, mainly to let you know of the publication of a new book.

AFTERWORD

The author of this book, Michael Allen, has written several other books (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are keen to learn more about the technique of writing fiction, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in Michael Allen’s The Truth about Writing.

See Michael’s thoughtful essay on the pro-am approach to writing: On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile.

There are also four other books, so far, in the Writer’s Guide series:

A Writer’s Guide to Emotion

A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint

A Writer’s Guide to Style

A Writer’s Guide to Success

More will follow soon.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that Michael Allen has written, please visit his author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

LITERARY AGENTS

They used to be essential. But now they’re struggling for survival. Do today’s writers really need them?

Michael Allen

***

PART 1: An introduction to the subject

1.1 What is a literary agent?

A literary agent is someone who represents a writer in negotiating with publishers, film producers, and indeed anyone who wants to make any sort of deal with that writer.

The theory is that the agent, who spends all his life negotiating deals and knows the business inside out, will get a much better result than would the poor ignorant writer if she tried to negotiate on her own behalf. Hence the writer will, in the long run, earn a lot more money through an agent.

True, the writer has to pay the agent commission, and nowadays this is likely to be 15% or 20% of the money paid. But even so, with a good agent, the writer will still be better off.

Here’s an example.

About 35 years ago (time flies when you’re having fun), I wrote some TV scripts for an American film and TV producer named Sheldon Reynolds. And Sheldon told me a story about a (then) famous agent called Swifty Lazar.

Sheldon’s wife read a novel by Irwin Shaw, and she nagged her husband repeatedly about buying the film rights. So Sheldon rang up Irwin and asked who his agent was.

‘Swifty,’ said Irwin.

‘Oh shit,’ said Sheldon, because Swifty was a notoriously difficult and demanding man to deal with.

However, Sheldon then rang Swifty, at his Hollywood office, and declared that he was interested, in principle, in buying the film rights to Irwin’s novel.

Whereupon Swifty instantly named a price which was somewhere up in the stratosphere.

Sheldon tried to negotiate. ‘Hold on a minute, Swifty,’ he said, in his most reasonable tones. ‘This isn’t a new book, it’s been out a few years. And I would never have bothered with it if my wife didn’t like it – so we’re not in a competitive situation here.’

‘I don’t need a competitive situation,’ said Swifty. ‘All I need is some jerk who wants to buy.’

1.2 What are the aims of this book?

This is the sixth book in my series of writer’s guides. All of them are intended to provide useful information for writers who are either young, or lacking experience in the publishing world, or both.

I am going to assume that most of the people reading this book are primarily interested in writing (and selling) full-length fiction.

However, some of what I have to say will definitely be of value to anyone planning a non-fiction book, particularly one aimed at the popular market (i.e. not a textbook or the results of ten years of academic research). But I shan’t have much to say which will be worth the time of playwrights (stage) or screenwriters (TV and film).

This book attempts to provide you with the bare minimum of knowledge which will help you to decide whether it would be a good idea to try to interest an agent in your work – or not.

And, in order to be realistic about trading conditions in the publishing world, I need also to show you how things can go badly wrong between a writer and an agent. I need to demonstrate to you that some agents are less than 100% honest; indeed some people, by declaring themselves to be agents, set out to steal money from you. And they quite often succeed.

If nothing else then, this book might help you to avoid wasting considerable sums of money.

More specifically, the aims of this book are as follows:

(i) To provide you with a short history of how agents first made their appearance, in the late nineteenth century, and how their role has changed and developed right up to the present day.

(ii) To provide you with examples of how relationships between agents and authors have sometimes gone badly wrong, to no one’s advantage, least of all that of the writers concerned.

(iii) And, finally, to show you that there are now more ways than one to make your work available to the reading public. By making use of such opportunities, you may eventually get to the point where it would be useful yo have an agent, if only to exploit to the maximum the success which you have earned without one.

My experience of publishing goes back a long way now (see section 1.3 below), and I have often noticed that young and inexperienced writers are usually very ambitious. But they are also – excuse me if I sound rude – lacking in basic knowledge about the book trade, and are naïve about the hard-nosed ways of businessmen. I certainly was, when I started out. The background aims of this book are therefore to provide such writers with enough information to prevent them (a) getting ripped off, and (b) wasting vast amounts of time and effort, and thus making themselves ill with frustration. And if you think those things couldn’t possibly happen to you, you’re wrong.

1.3 What makes the author of this book (Michael Allen) think he’s an expert?

At the time of writing I am a couple of months short of my 75th birthday. I was first paid for writing an article in a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963; since then I have written at least 25 other novels (under my own name and several pen names). At present I have about 60 ebooks on sale as Kindle ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction. These are published under various pen-names in addition to my own, and they vary in length from 100,000-word novels to single short stories. I have written about a dozen non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers.

See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages on Amazon sites.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence I have had experience of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s. For about ten years I was also the line manager of a small in-house printing unit, so I know about the technology of printing and book design. And I have, in my time, sold other people’s books to publishers, thus acting as an informal agent; though as the writers concerned were friends, I never charged any commission.

As far as my own agents are concerned, here is a brief history. In all, I have had dealings with half a dozen different firms (and their overseas associates) over a period of forty years.

After forty years, in 1999, I lost interest in traditional publishing and published my own books thereafter. Today I operate exclusively as an ‘indie’ or self-publisher through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. Some, though not all, of my traditionally published novels have been reprinted as ebooks.

The English writer Ted Willis used to say that a writer should change his agent every seven years – otherwise you always remain the kid who wandered in off the street. And there is something in that.

For my part, I was dumped by an agent at least once. On another occasion, when I was with a big firm, the individual in that agency who looked after me resigned to start a business of his own; and I went with him. This is often done, but in this case the arrangement was not a success.

The final fifteen years of my connections with traditional publishing were dealt with very amicably through leading agencies in New York and London.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing; but I have had extensive dealings with both American agents and publishers.

PART 2: A short history of literary agents

2.1 Early days

By the late nineteenth century it was obvious that there was quite a lot of money to be made in publishing. And writers were beginning to feel that they weren’t getting their fair share of it. In fact some of them suspected, with good reason, that they were simply being cheated. (Funnily enough, that attitude persists to this day.)

In 1895, for instance, it became known in London that a novel sold outright to a publisher for £500 had, in the following seventeen years, made a profit of £19,000; which would be a tidy sum even today. Writers weren’t happy about that sort of thing.

This general atmosphere of distrust between publishers and writers made it possible for a new breed of middlemen to step into the angry space between the disgruntled parties. Of course, writers had often had friends, fathers (particularly where ladies were involved), and occasionally lawyers, who had given writers a helping hand in the dealings with publishers. But now a specific type of sharp-eyed entrepreneur could see an opportunity for profit.

Literary scholars tell us that the term ‘literary agent’ was in use from the 1870s onwards, and by the 1890s the existence and function of such agents was well known in publishing.

In 1893, William Heinemann (a publisher) published an article in the magazine Athenaeum in which he said: ‘This is the age of the middleman. He is generally a parasite. He always flourishes…. He calls himself the literary agent.’

Heinemann was, in fact, referring to one particular individual: A.P. Watt; and the agency established by Watt is still in existence.

Watt seems to have been a forceful character, because by the time Heinemann was complaining about him, and any others of the same ilk, Watt was listing among his clients such famous names as Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling.

It is worth noting that, at about that point in time, Watt and a few others operated by sending out circulars to upcoming writers, setting out what services they could offer, and touting for business. Compare and contrast that situation with that of the present day, when it is the writers who have to approach the agents and describe (in effect) what they can do for the agent.

It is also clear that, by around the turn of the century, the system of remunerating agents by allowing them to take a percentage of the total royalties was also in place. Watt apparently began his agency by charging an hourly rate, much like a lawyer; but he found that all too often his clients ‘forgot’ to pay him, and he switched to the arrangement whereby all royalties were first paid to him; he then deducted his commission and passed on the rest to the writer.

As to the rate of commission… Well, even then the figure of 10% had come to be recognised as the standard rate for agents to charge. Precisely how this came about is impossible to say, but my guess is that it was probably a nice round figure which was already being charged by theatrical agents and similar professionals. And it made the arithmetic so much simpler, didn’t it? Anyone could understand 10% and work it out in their head. Whereas if the figure was 8.5% it would all get so much more complicated. No, no: 10% it was.

Oh but surely, I hear you say, if there were lots of start-up agents touting for business and sending out circulars and such, surely they would be in competition with each other, and would be offering lower percentages in order to attract custom. Weren’t they?

No.

And why not?

Because the fix was in, that’s why not. Competition of that sort was not welcome, and any new agent who tried that particular dodge would be taken on one side and have the facts of life explained to him.

This kind of price-fixing by mutual agreement was almost certainly illegal then and definitely is now. Capitalist countries have laws which try to ensure that the consumer gets a product at a fair price – that price being found by competition. But in practice manufacturers tend to make secret deals to keep the prices up.

An example of this kind of chicanery can be found in the auction business. In a decision adopted on 30 October 2002, the European Commission found that Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the world’s two leading fine-arts auction houses, had breached European Union competition rules by colluding to fix commission fees and other trading terms between 1993 and early 2000.

In publishing, the US Department of Justice recently (2012/13) accused Apple and five major publishers of price-fixing, and won. Most of the publishers just admitted the obvious truth, struck a deal, and paid a whopping fine. Penguin, for instance, paid $75 million to settle the matter. Apple did not cave in because they’re different, right? Not exactly above the law, but, well… You know Apple.

So, you ask, why doesn’t the Department of Justice, or the European Commission, or someone, take a look at why literary agents somehow or other all charge the same commission? Answer, because literary agents constitute a pathetically tiny piece of world business, and nobody in authority would worry their head for two minutes about what agents do. They’re too small to fuss about, and if writers are dumb enough to put up with it that’s their problem.

But, nevertheless, the fix was in almost from the beginning, and it still is. Agents do not compete on price. A rate of 10% was standard, in the UK and the US, until around 1970, when the business began to hot up. As we shall see. And by 1970 the number of literary agents operating in London had risen to 70. There were plenty of them in New York, too.

2.2 The nature of the writer/agent relationship

We have reached (roughly) the year 1970 in our short historical survey of literary agents, so this is a good point to pause and consider a number of aspects of this trade (I don’t think it can qualify as a profession).

From the beginning, the practitioners of the trade defined themselves as ‘agents’. And most countries, or US states, have laws about the relationship between agents (in a general, commercial context) and their principals; they also have a backlog of actual legal disputes which provide legal precedents for guidance. For example, Wikipedia has an article on Agency in English Law.

Few states, however, have laws relating to literary agents in particular.

A principal, by the way, is the person in charge. A principal is the person, or perhaps a company, who commissions the agent to act on his or her behalf in certain circumstances.

And the first thing that strikes me about the paragraph immediately above is that, for at least the last fifty years, the principal/agent relationship which operates in the book world has been precisely the reverse of what is considered normal in the rest of the business world.

A.P. Watt, you recall, touted for business. He went out of his way to advertise his services, and, if contacted by a writer, he undoubtedly did his best to convince the writer to commission him. He was the one in the weak position: the supplicant.

By 1970, that sort of attitude had already become a historic relic. It was now very much the writer’s task – and an extremely difficult one at that – to persuade the powerful and famous agent to accept the miserable unknown writer as a possible client.

The agent was the person (it was thought) who knew all the right people in publishing. She knew the editors, knew what they were looking for, had incriminating photographs of key personnel, et cetera. So the agent held all the cards. It was the writer who went along, cap in hand, tugging his forelock if male, and giving multiple curtseys if female, and tried to get the agent to give them the time of day.

Furthermore, it was commonly the case that, even if the writer was (grudgingly) taken on, the relationship might not last long. Unless some considerable success (in the shape of money) was soon forthcoming, the agent would send the writer a brief note saying, in effect, thanks but don’t bother sending me any more of your stuff because it obviously isn’t up to scratch.

Writers, if they somehow managed to get taken on to an agent’s books, would put up with considerable delay and even humiliation from their agent, because they knew full well how hard it would be to find another one. And, wisely or otherwise, writers were of the view that an agent was essential to get your foot in the door of publishing – from which, of course, limitless wealth and fame would result.

There are few occasions when this role of applicant is reversed to the normal agent/principal relationship: and one such is when the writer is a former US President.

In his recent memoirs, the New York agent Sterling Lord recalls that the first President Bush (George H.W.) interviewed at least one agent before he decided not to proceed with writing the traditional memoir of his years in office.

An earlier President, Lyndon Johnson, deputed a lawyer, Arthur Krim, to do the spade work for him in selecting a suitable agent; Sterling Lord was invited to attend an interview.

During the course of the interview, it was suggested that, for the honour of representing President Johnson, Lord should reduce his commission from the usual 10%. Lord politely declined to do so; it would, he said, be unfair to his other clients.

Having reviewed the situation, Lord decided that, given Johnson’s close association with the unpopular war in Vietnam, his memoirs would be tough to sell, particularly for the kind of advance that the President apparently expected. Furthermore, Lord already represented several clients who were strongly opposed to Johnson’s policies. So Lord withdrew his name from consideration as Johnson’s agent. This did not go down very well.

Another point worth making here is that agents are essentially salesmen. And sales are confirmed in written contracts. So to strike the best deal for a writer, an agent needs to have at least a passing familiarity with the drafting of contracts as they pertain to book publishing, movie rights, subsidiary rights, foreign rights, audio rights, and so forth.

As the years have gone by, publishers’ contracts have become ever more complicated and, yes, devious. Here is David Vandagriff, a US media lawyer (now retired) speaking about book contracts:

‘After having reviewed many, many agreements and proposed agreements between traditional publishers and authors, [I am] prepared to say these contracts, as a group, stand apart from the general run of business agreements as conscience-shocking monstrosities. They’re simply designed to screw authors and to give publishers control over their work that is far beyond what is regarded as reasonable in the rest of American business.’ (The UK is no different, by the way.)

So, that is the situation that agents have to deal with. They need to understand the dangers which are present in any modern contract with a book publisher; and, in my opinion, they have a duty to protect their clients against signing a contract which will actually cost them money through lost royalties and other valuable rights.

It is possible, of course, for an agent to argue that such is not his responsibility at all – that every writer is a big boy or girl, and that they should learn to understand contracts all on their own. This latter approach is actually something that I tried to adopt myself. For years I ran a self-instruction course in English law as it applies to the media, particularly publishing.

One useful book to read, if you’re thinking of doing the same, and if you live in the UK, is Clark’s Publishing Agreements by Lynette Owen. The ninth edition was published on 9 December 2013, and it will cost you £130. Which is undeniably expensive. But it could save you a much larger sum if it enables you to question a dodgy clause.

About 25 years ago, I was interested in adapting a fairly well known novel as a television series. My agent and I agreed that the best way forward was for me to buy an option on the TV rights before pitching the idea to any producers. In that way I could control the operation, whereas if I pitched the idea to a producer without having an option on the rights, the producer could just pick up the idea, leave me out of it, and commission her son-in-law to write the thing instead.

So, I was discussing with my agent the form that this option contract should take.

‘If it was up to me,’ I said, ‘I would just use the model contract for an option in Clark’s Publishing Agreements.’

It turned out that the agent had never heard of the book, despite the fact that it has been the standard text on the subject for several decades.

At least one US copyright lawyer (C.E. Petit) believes that, while agents are not lawyers, they are engaged in the practice of law. This is one reason, he argues, why literary agents should be regulated and licensed – which they are not. In many jurisdictions this distinguishes them from, for instance, agents in insurance and real estate. California, home of the movie industry, has laws governing ‘talent agents’, but says nothing about the literary kind.

Nowadays, as we shall see, the formal relationship between an agent and his clients is likely to be governed by a formal written agreement; this document is drafted by the agent and his lawyer. The terms of it are not determined by the writer, thus endorsing my point that the agent is, in practice the principle.

That being the case, you should not be surprised to hear that modern agent-writer agreements are seldom advantageous to the writer. The days when two gentlemen could just shake hands on an agreement are long since over.

2.3 The gentlemen retire

Sterling Lord, mentioned above, reminds us that, from about 1960 on, publishing underwent a change (and it was not to be the last). It all became a lot less gentlemanly and a lot more money-orientated.

The people who founded publishing businesses in the early part of the twentieth century had often been very literary fellows (they were nearly all men), and the firms often bore the names of their founders (Victor Gollancz; Farrar, Straus & Giroux). But now the income-generating power of paperbacks began to be obvious, and the publishing business began to attract a different sort of person.

In the second half of the twentieth century, publishing was characterised by a constant stream of mergers. Big companies bought little companies – sometimes by the dozen. Some of the bigger firms then went public, i.e. their shares were traded on various stock exchanges. And when that happened, the money men threw out all the well-read guys and substituted hard-nosed businessmen in their place.

By 1990, the formerly genteel Random House was now being run by a former banker named Alberto Vitale. He was a man who boasted to all and sundry that he was far too busy ever to read a book. In 1990, Vitale decided that he wanted to get rid of Andre Schiffrin, a long-standing and much admired head of a Random House literary division. To achieve this, Vitale simply ‘rearranged’ some Random House costs, charging Schiffrin’s division for expenses which had actually been incurred elsewhere. Schiffrin’s backlist of books, potentially a great asset, was written off at zero value. Result: Schiffrin was identified as a hopeless loser of the firm’s money. He was kicked out.

As far as the agents were concerned, a much tougher breed of operator now made an appearance. Swifty Lazar, with whom we began this book, was clearly not a gentleman. He was a ruthless, hard-nosed bastard.

One of Swifty’s techniques was to offer a deal to a publisher which involved a Hollywood star or a famous politician as the ‘author’ of a book (which would, in due course, be ghosted). He would do this without bothering to ask the star or the politician if he was interested. Only later, when Swifty had a substantial deal agreed in principle, would he approach the big name in question, and suggest that this individual should become his client. If there was enough money dangled, he was seldom refused.

Swifty used this technique was in relation to Henry Kissinger. In that deal, Simon & Schuster were so keen to publish the proposed book that they agreed to pay two commissions, Swifty’s and a commission to Kissinger’s regular agent, to keep them happy.

Another ungentlemanly feature which began to emerge in the 1980s and ’90s was the practice of poaching clients. In the old days, agent A would never have dreamed of going to a writer who was already represented by agent B, and whispering in his ear about how much more money he would make if he shifted his allegiance. It simply wasn’t done. Now it began to be done in a fairly shameless manner.

The most famous poacher was, and is, the Harvard-educated Andrew Wylie. Craig Wylie, Andrew’s father, was at one time editor-in-chief at Houghton Mifflin, so Andrew grew up with books; and presumably he was taught how gentlemen are expected to behave. However, all you need to know now is that, for a good many years, Andrew Wylie has been known in the business as the Jackal.

Wylie’s most publicised poach was that of the English writer, Martin Amis. For 22 years Amis had been represented by the English agent Pat Kavanagh. But the Jackal got his teeth into him and lured him away. This upset a great many people in London literary circles, not least the writer Julian Barnes, who had thought himself a close friend of Amis, and who was also married to Pat Kavanagh.

Such is the power of a £500,000 contract, which is what Wylie negotiated for Amis. (About £495,000 more than Amis was worth, in my opinion.)

Just to give you an idea of the scale upon which a big-time agent operates, Wylie’s agency now handles more than 700 clients. These include, as you would expect, some seriously big names, such as Al Gore and Elmore Leonard, but also the estates of some major literary figures, such as Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer. The estates of dead writers can still generate huge sums of money.

By the way, if you are thinking that Andrew Wylie sounds like just the chap to represent you, let me warn you that you are right out of luck. The Wylie Agency web site has a page headed Submissions, and at the time of writing it reads as follows:

‘The Wylie Agency does not currently accept unsolicited submissions. So eff off.’

Actually I invited the second sentence, but you get the general idea. If Mr Wylie’s web site does not convince you that the agent is now the man in charge, then I don’t know what will.

In modern publishing, writers are mere nobodies: they are just the mugs, suckers, and fuzzy thinkers who work for years, in return for no money at all, in the hope that one day (if only because of the law of averages) an agent somewhere will decide that they have talent, and that after that everything will go smoothly until, in a very short time, the writer ends up as famous as… fill in name of choice.

Good luck with that idea.

2.4 The position at the end of the twentieth century

As the twentieth century progressed, the numbers of agents increased. For a certain sort of person – perhaps someone with a few years of experience in publishing, or even in an agent’s office – the prospect of setting up in business as an independent agent was an attractive one. By the year 2000 there were 161 agents in the UK. Of these, 37% had been set up since 1990.

By the end of the century, the relationship between writers, agents, and publishers was pretty well defined.

It was hard, though not impossible, for a writer to get anywhere without an agent to help her.

Publishers had merged and merged again to the point where there were now only six major markets for writers and agents to aim for; there are now five, following the merger of Penguin and Random House in 2013. (For further details of this merger mania, see my earlier ebook, A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing.)

Agents had done a bit of merging too. It dawned on people that if 15 agents, each with one or two big names on their books, rolled themselves into one firm, then the Big Six publishers would have to take that new agency a bit more seriously than they took the little guys. Better terms would be negotiable. Or at any rate, bigger money.

Speaking of money, it was in the 1980s that the general practice of charging clients a basic commission of 10% was shifted markedly upwards to 15%.

Once again, it is interesting – but probably futile – to speculate as to how this came about. We have already noted that if there was deliberate collusion to fix a price, this would probably be an illegal act. So it was not the case, one assumes, that the various bodies representing agents collectively (of which more in a moment) sat around discussing the issue in formal session, and passed a motion, recorded in the minutes, that as from next Tuesday the basic commission rate would go up from 10% to 15%. Dear me no.

No, it is much more likely that things were done in the same way that the leader of the UK Conservative Party used to be ‘selected’. What happened was that a few senior chaps got together, had a few drinks, kicked the can around a bit, and then they each went out and talked to a few other chaps, and got a general, sort of, you know, feeling for the general atmosphere. After which, in the case of the Conservatives, the name of the future leader would sort of… emerge. Nothing so vulgar as an election.

So, somewhere in the 1980s, a general sort of, you know, feeling kind of… emerged among agents. The feeling was that life would be a could deal more comfortable if writers were paying a lot more for the agents’ services than they had been so far.

Then, over a period of a few months or so, the leading agencies upped their rates; and the smaller agencies said to themselves, Well, if they need the extra 5% to function effectively, we certainly do. And so forth.

You will have noticed, perhaps, that it seems so much more tactful to refer to the increase as ‘an extra 5%’ rather than a 50% increase on the earlier rate, which is what it was.

For the benefit of any newbies, perhaps it needs to be pointed out that the 15% would be charged as the rate on book contracts in the home market. Higher rates would apply if, for instance, the UK rights were sold by a UK agent, acting on behalf of the US agent, or vice versa. And higher rates would often apply to film rights, which might involve paying commission to a Hollywood-based specialist.

None of which means, to be fair, that the client was necessarily being ripped off. Far from it. Sometimes an agent’s skills are worth a lot of money.

Sterling Lord quotes a case of an agent meeting a film producer. The producer opened proceedings by stating that he was willing to offer $100,000 for the film rights. The agent, slightly stunned perhaps, said nothing. And then, after a nervous silent pause, the producer promptly doubled his initial offer.

Before we leave the subject of commission, perhaps it is worth noting that the question of a basic rate of 20% is now being talked of in some quarters. For a discussion of this kind of issue, see the Writer Beware pages of the SWFA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America). These pages are in fact absolutely essential for anyone contemplating a search for an agent.

For several decades, agents in both the UK and the US (and probably in many other countries too) have established various ‘professional’ societies or associations. These give the agency business an air of respectability. Or at least, that was the intention.

In the UK, there is the Association of Authors’ Agents. This body’s web site provides a code of practice, a members directory, and various other bits and pieces. About 100 firms are listed as members.

In the US, the equivalent body is the Association of Authors’ Representatives, which has 400 members. The AAR’s web site is somewhat more informative than the AAA’s.

At the time of writing, a search of the two web sites reveals that neither body has much to say about the commission charged by members. That is presumably left for each individual firm to discuss with a potential client. But don’t expect any cut-price offers.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to be aware that, in most agencies, the end of the century had witnessed a passing of the handshake deal forming the contract between agent and writer. Because a contract is that is what it always was, in law, even if it was not written down.

In the 1980s, the practice arose of asking writers to sign an agency agreement. Some writers probably signed this without thinking very hard. After all, what was the alternative? Offending the agent? Unthinkable! But it would always have been wise, and today it is absolutely essential, to take a very close look at the small print of such an agreement.

It is not unknown for them to contain clauses such as ‘You may not write in any other genre for at least three years.’ And you might very well want to.

Most agents are honest, but in today’s market all are hard-pressed, and the need to survive financially may come to outweigh considerations of friendship. On close examination the provisions of the agent/writer agreement may be seen to have some sharp edges. You have been warned.

PART 3: Disagreements and disputes

When money is involved, it is often the case that even families fall out among themselves, so it will hardly come as a surprise to be told that disputes between agents and their clients can be bitter and protracted.

In this part of the book I am going to describe a number of well known cases. I do so not just because of the juicy scandalous nature of the stories but because they provide instructive examples for the inexperienced writer of just how badly things can go wrong. You really do want to avoid similar disasters if you possibly can.

3.1 Villainy begins early

Writers and agents, we may safely assume, began to have disputes and disagreements pretty much from the beginning, but the first recorded thief in this area was a certain A.A. Bright.

Bright specialised in drama rather than books, and J.M. Barrie was an enormously successful playwright (most famous today for the character Peter Pan). In 1906, perhaps overwhelmed by his financial problems, Bright committed suicide. And shortly before his agent’s death Barrie was privately informed that Bright had defrauded him of £18,000; other clients had lost similar sums.

In 1906, £18,000 was a huge sum of money. In 1939, my parents were able to by a perfectly good family house for £800. Barrie, however, must have been a forgiving soul, for when Bright died he wrote a generous eulogy in The Times. He was, wrote Barrie, ‘a man of the mind most catholic and cultured… of so beautiful and modest a nature… For many years he was my most loved friend.’

But then, of course, Barrie was definitely a bit peculiar.

3.2 The case of Harper Lee

It is easy for someone my age to assume that you are bound to know who Harper Lee was, but of course you may not. I will be as brief as possible.

Harper Lee wrote one novel, and one novel only. Its title was To Kill a Mockingbird. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and was turned into an Oscar-winning film, one which earned $20 million on a $2 million budget. In short, To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic of modern American literature.

From the point of view of the book’s income-generating power, it is important to note that it has been widely used as a set book in schools and colleges. Thus it has continued to sell in huge numbers for over fifty years: usually about 750,000 copies a year.

We now know, because of the data provided in court papers, that in one typical six-month period, ending in December 2009, Harper Lee’s royalties amounted to $1,688,064 and change. And the agent, we may reasonably assume, was on 15% of that.

Ms Lee had a number of agents over the years, but she was principally represented by McIntosh and Otis. Eventually, the man she dealt with there was one Samuel Pinkus. Lee seems to have trusted him totally.

About ten years ago, Pinkus left M&O to found his own agency, and Lee went with him. Harper Lee is now in her late eighties and in 2007 suffered a stroke.

To cut a long story short, Lee’s family and friends began to suspect that Pinkus had taken advantage of her age and her absolute trust in him. They discovered that, knowingly or not, she had signed a document which gave the entire copyright in her famous work to her agent. He owned the entire book, and therefore much of the income from it (depending on previous contracts).

Not surprisingly, the friends and family set about hitting Mr Pinkus with as heavy a legal brick as they could find, and one can hardly blame them.

If you want to read the full details of this case go to To Steal a Mockingbird? by Mark Seal. This is an article which appeared in Vanity Fair in 2013, and it is still available online.

The article is, I believe, well worth your attention, because it fully demonstrates that, because of the workings of randomness, not to mention their own devious scheming, some agents end up representing gold mines. And if they are not fully honest and reliable, the situation can get very messy and stressful; not to mention expensive in legal fees.

In September 2013, a lawyer for Pinkus announced that the warring parties (Lee and Pinkus) had reached an agreement in principle to settle the dispute between them. So let us hope that the wrongs have been put right, and that this frail old lady can live out the rest of her days in peace.

In her prime, Harper Lee certainly had no doubts about the way things were going. Her first agent was Maurice Crain, and when Crain died, in 1970, Lee realised that the old way of agenting had gone with him.

By the late 1980s, she was complaining that the literary business was a whole new ball game. Agents like Crain had been replaced by whippersnappers, whose only concern, she said, was their commission. Pity she wasn’t a bit quicker to spot what Pinkus was up to, but by then she had had a stroke.

3.3 Martha Grimes

Martha Grimes is not as big a name as Harper Lee, but she is the author of 22 mystery novels, plus a number of other books. In 2012 she won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

In 2010, Martha found herself being sued by her former agent, Peter Lampack. Note the word former.

Lampack stated that he had negotiated a contract for Grimes which contained an ‘option’ clause. This kind of clause is very common – almost universal – and it gave Grimes’s publisher, Penguin, the right to have the first opportunity to publish her next book. As it happened, they did want to publish her next one. Lampack argued that he was therefore entitled to his commission on the second book, even though he was no longer Martha Grimes’s agent when Penguin actually bought the book.

In November 2010 Lampack lost the argument. A New York Supreme Court Judge dismissed most of his lawsuit. And I should hope so too. Cheeky bugger, that Lampack.

Ms Grimes no longer uses an agent, as such. Instead, her lawyer negotiates for her.

‘I’m sure there are some good agents out there,’ says Grimes. ‘I just don’t know who they are.’

Yup, they can be hard to find, that’s true.

Grimes has got her own back by writing a novel which takes the piss (as we say in the UK) out of the publishing industry in general and agents in particular. It’s called The Way of All Fish, and it sounds like fun.

3.4 The Asimov affair

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is another well known name, at least if you’re of a certain age and are interested in science fiction. I, Robot is perhaps his most famous work: the film starred Will Smith and made a lot of money.

By any standards, Asimov was a remarkably prolific writer. He wrote, or edited, some 500 books on a wide variety of subjects, though concentrating on science. It is said that his books are listed in libraries under nine out of the ten major subject categories in the Dewey decimal system.

While he was alive, Asimov seems to have acted as his own agent, and according to come sources he was an absolute pushover in negotiations. When he sold what was to be his 262nd book to Doubleday, he accepted terms which any midlist author could have improved upon, and the firm had to more or less bully him into taking a $50,000 advance. He wanted $5,000. Well, maybe there were tax reasons; on both sides.

Anyway, with a track record like that it is obvious that after his death the estate would require some professional handling, and the family (daughter Robyn and widow Janet) appointed the Trident Media Group as agents.

Early in 2013 the relationship went sour, and the family tried to terminate the contract. The estate wanted a judge to declare the relationship over, and to require the trident Media Group to pay $1 million in damages for its ‘deceptive business practices’.

Four days later, they got a letter from TMG’s lawyer, which rejected the estate’s assertions and declared that the agreement was not terminated. So there, see.

Watch this space. At he time of writing this is not resolved.

Strange how reluctant these agent guys are to let you go when you’re making money, isn’t it? Whereas, if you’re just starting out, you’re lucky if you can get them to read a three-line letter.

Robert Gottlieb, by the way, the co-founder and Chairman of TMG, started the agency in 2000 after 24 years at the William Morris Agency, which is about as big a name as any. His clients have included Tom Clancy and Dean Koontz.

When this situation was reported on the Passive Voice blog, one comment came from a writer who said that he had recently been offered representation by a large NY agency, and the contract between writer and agent wasn’t terminable at all, once signed. Not ever. Not even for unsold rights. Needless to say, the commenter added, he did not sign, ‘but there are plenty of authors who have.’

3.5 The Agent as White Knight

So far in Part 3 I have presented a portrait of various agents as hard-nosed bastards who were, if not exactly crooks, then very definitely a bit on the dodgy side. They were, to quote Stephen King, the kind of people ‘who would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes’.

However, let us lean over backwards to be fair. Can we, do you think, find an agent who went out of his way to help an innocent lady client? An agent who saw all too clearly how his client had been given the old run-around, to her very definite disadvantage, and who went to some trouble to put things right?

Yes, indeed we can. His name is Arthur Klebanoff, and the incident is described in his 2002 book The Agent.

Once upon a time there was a very successful English romantic novelist named Anne Hampson. In the early part of her career, Anne was published by the English firm which was then known as Mills & Boon. In the UK, the name Mills & Boon is virtually synonymous with popular romantic fiction.

From 1971, however, Mills & Boon had technically been a subsidiary of Harlequin, a powerful North-American company which had its head office in Canada and another subsidiary in the United States.

In the early part of her career, Anne Hampson had operated without the benefit of an agent, but in the 1980s, with 100 novels behind her, she thought it was time to appoint one. So she chose the powerful New York firm of Morton Janklow Associates. The agent within that firm who looked after her interests was Arthur Klebanoff.

Given that Anne was a well established writer in the romance field, and was particularly popular in America, Klebanoff soon negotiated a new contract for her. The deal was done with Silhouette, an American firm, and the contract was for more than twenty books and $1 million.

Having arranged a very satisfactory contract for Anne’s future books, Klebanoff then began to look at her previous work, which had all been published by the London subsidiary of Harlequin, i.e. Mills & Boon – a firm which I shall refer to from here on as M&B.

When Klebanoff looked at Anne’s previous contracts with M&B he was shocked by what he saw. To cut a long story short, he found that this original publisher had offered his writer a series of contracts which were, shall we say, less favourable to the author than they might have been.

What was happening was that M&B had offered Anne a contract for world rights – a very common practice. M&B had then sold the rights to her books to their parent company, in Canada, which then sold the US rights to their American subsidiary.

At each stage of this transfer process, the companies had taken a slice of the action. In other words, for every dollar which Anne earned on royalties in the US, 75 cents were removed and retained by the two companies outside London. And, since the average print run for an Anne Hampson novel, in the US market, was 750,000, this amounted to a considerable sum. On each book. And she had published 100 of them.

This practice of passing the rights from company to company was, in Klebanoff’s view, entirely unnecessary. (That’s my view too.) It was certainly damaging to his client’s financial interests.

Clearly, the sole purpose of this elaborate game of pass-the-parcel was to increase the amount of income from Anne Hampson’s books which could be retained within the Harlequin group of companies, instead of being paid to the author. There was nothing illegal about it, but some observers might feel that it was the moral equivalent of stealing money from an old lady. It certainly wasn’t a gentlemanly approach.

None of this arrangement, needless to say, had ever been explained Anne Hampson herself. It took an experienced man, with a good head for figures, to go through the contracts and the royalty statements and work out the figures.

Once Klebanoff had a clear picture of what had been going on, he took action to obtain compensation for his client.

In his book, Klebanoff does not give us much detail of his discussions with M&B and its parent company. However, my guess is that, being a New Yorker, he used some pretty blunt language.

First, he would have told M&B that he was wise to what they were up to. Second, he would have pointed out that the contracts gave the author the right to examine the publisher’s books in respect of her royalties. Third, he would have made it clear that, unless they came up with a considerable sum of money by way of compensation, he would not only send in a team of auditors, but would also make it generally known in the book trade that he was having the books examined, and why. If the word of that spread, it would not be long before other agents in London also wised up to the situation, and sent in their own teams of accountants to pore over the figures for their authors as well.

This was not a happy prospect for M&B, or Harlequin. It’s never nice being caught being nasty to old ladies.

Harlequin refused to meet Mr Klebanoff in New York, to discuss this situation. They refused, he believes, in order ‘to protect themselves, they hoped, from jurisdiction in the United States.’ So he flew to London to negotiate the details.

When he arrived, he found that the Harlequin representatives had been doing some fast thinking. They now claimed that they had ‘misunderstood’ his earlier conversations with them.

The meeting was over in no time and a face-saving deal was done. Anne Hampson would receive a large sum of money, but its purpose would be disguised. This was certainly not compensation for being cheated, and it definitely wasn’t hush money. Dear me no. No, this payment was dressed up as the purchase price for the copyright of 92 of Anne Hampson’s books which had been published by M&B. The price paid was in seven figures. i.e. in excess of $1 million.

Through this deal, as Klebanoff explains, ‘Harlequin avoided the accounting issue and the risk that other authors would focus on these practices.’

In other words, it was tacitly understood that Klebanoff would not make it his business to inform every other M&B author of what he had managed to negotiate, and why. (Not until he came to write his memoirs, anyway. Further details of these negotiations can be found in The Agent.)

This story leaves a particularly unpleasant taste in my mouth because I know that M&B went out of its way to make its most popular authors feel that they were highly valued and well treated.

Every Christmas the bestselling ladies would be sent a couple of bottles of something bubbly. Once a year they would receive a first-class return train ticket to London. On arrival, they would be warmly welcomed and taken to lunch at the Savoy Grill, or somewhere equally fashionable – a place where you might find Elizabeth Taylor at the next table. And then, as they were put back on the train home, they would have an enormous bunch of flowers thrust into their arms.

The ladies treated in this way would settle back in their seats with a nice warm feeling inside.

What perfect gentleman those lovely publishers are, she would say to herself.

Yeah, right.

PART 4: The impact of the digital age

4.1 POD

About fifteen years ago, if you were paying attention (and I for one certainly was), it was fairly easy to see that there were two pieces of digital technology which were going to have dramatic effects on the book-publishing business. The first of these was a process known as print-on-demand (POD).

Up to about the year 2000, printing was done on big heavy machines which went clank and smelt of hot oil. If you wanted something printed, the text had to be set up in lead type, clamped on to the machine, and then run off in as many copies as you required. Given the complexity of the process, and the time involved, few printers would dirty their machine for less than 500 copies and preferably 1,000.

Digital technology changed all that. I am old enough to remember that my first acquaintance with a Xerox copier was in 1972. Thereafter, that kind of technology improved steadily, until, round about the turn of the century, it was even possible to print paperback books on such a machine; and soon after that, you could do full-colour hardback books.

This process is now known as POD, or print on demand. Not surprisingly, it has offered amazing new opportunities. True, if you want a print-run of 750,000 paperbacks, it is still cheaper to use the old machines; but for short runs POD is ideal.

What this means, in practice, is that small publishers can, if they wish, take a risk with an obscure book, or a first-time novelist, at a much reduced cost.

More to the point, perhaps, a book need never go out of print. In the old days, if you sold your first printing of 2,000 copies, you then had to decide whether to keep the lead type in store (expensive), and if you did decide to do a reprint you would then have to store perhaps 1,000 new copies and wait for them to sell out – slowly. Meanwhile you were paying warehouse costs for them.

Today, you just make a digital file, and place an order for a single book, or half a dozen, as and when needed for a paying customer.

It is worth noticing, in passing, that in the old days it was common for a contract specify that if a book went out of print the contract would come to an end, and all rights would revert to the author. But now – happily for publishers but perhaps not so wonderfully for authors – a book need never go out of print.

Consequently a publisher can hang on to the rights for ever. And he will. Unless, of course, he is sick of the sight of you, in which case you will be dumped in short order.

Another point worth noticing is that POD opened the doors to tens of thousands of self-publishers. In fact, the figure is probably hundreds of thousands.

Technically, it had always been possible for an author to publish his own book. You could do it almost from the beginning of printing: all you needed was lots of money. You might also need a garage (or two) to store the books in while you tried to sell them. Which you never would.

As stated above, your printer would not take on the job without printing a substantial number, which had the benefit of reducing the unit cost to a level at which you might reasonably expect to sell some. But you would probably be left with 9,800 out of a print run of 10,000. People have gone bankrupt and been divorced by their spouses for lesser offences than that.

But today, POD offers truly amazing facilities at astonishingly low cost.

For example. Suppose you are some sort of eccentric weirdo, and you want to publish a full-colour hardback book, 12 inches square, 160 pages long, on top quality paper, consisting of nothing but photographs of various doors in Venice. The cost, 20 years ago, would have been unthinkable for anyone but a millionaire. Today you can do it for well under £100.

I know this for a fact, because that’s exactly what I did myself, four years ago. If you go to blurb.com and search for The Doors of Ancient Venice, you can have a look at my book on the preview page. As a matter of fact you can even buy a copy, because technically this book is ‘published’ in the sense that it’s on sale to the public. But no one ever has bought a copy, and I don’t expect them to. I created it purely for myself and a few friends who are keen on Venice.

If you want to print, say, 20 copies of a short story, to hand out to your local writers’ group, or a booklet about the history of your church, in simple black and white, then you can do that too, for perhaps a pound or two per copy.

If you have not yet grasped the point, it is this: anyone who wishes to publish their own book, in old-fashioned print form, can do so. All they have to do is learn the software and prepare the text for digital printing, or get a sixteen-year-old grandson to do it for them.

Should you feel terrified at the thought of anything more complicated than writing a letter in Word, then there are, of course, many firms which will do the job for you. These firms began to come to the fore about ten years ago, and now there are dozens of them.

The most famous provider of self-publishing services is perhaps a company called Author Solutions. It has many subsidiaries – some would say disguises. Over the past few years, companies of this type have ‘helped’ tens of thousands of writers to publish their novel, or their memoirs, or a book of favourite recipes – whatever. And no doubt there are, somewhere, some satisfied customers.

I have to say, however, that I have never used one of those services myself, because I don’t trust them and consider them far too expensive. And, from those who have used these services, there arises a never-ending stream of complaint – often couched in the bitterest terms.

If you google “Author Solutions”, and ignore the top returns because they often lead to the firm’s own pages, you will soon get a feeling for the attitude of many customers. Phrases such as ‘market leader in author exploitation’ and ‘universally reviled’ soon come to your attention.

In 2012, Author Solutions was purchased by Penguin for $116 million, which gives you some idea of the perceived scale of potential customers and the estimated profit which can be made from them. But three former clients of Author Solutions feel so strongly that they have been cheated that they are going much further than the usual litany of complaints on internet forums. These three are trying to launch a class-action lawsuit against Penguin, alleging that Author Solutions misrepresents itself with the intention of attracting authors, makes false claims, fails to pay royalties, and so on and so forth. The three authors claim $5 million in damages.

Some observers are watching Author Solutions very carefully. And they don’t like what they see. They believe that the firm exploits over-ambitious writers who are prepared to spend their life savings, or somebody else’s, on publicising a book in the mistaken belief that, once publicised, it will rise to the top of the bestseller lists.

David Gaughran, for example, recently noted that, for some years, Author-Solutions reps have been attending the prestigious literary festival known as the LA Times Book Fair.

In 2013, Author Solutions set up 80 book signings for their clients, at this one Fair, and in addition they ‘showcased’ some 1,100 titles.

And how much, do you think, did that raise for the company?

Gaughran says that the company’s own price lists states that they charge $3,999 to run a book signing, and $599 for a showcase. Total at one Book Fair: $319,920.

But those rates are cheap. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you want to give your book a whole-page ad in the book-industry must-read trade journal, Publishers Weekly. Cost? $16,499. And a whole-page ad page in the Readers’ Digest? $72,499.

It’s a lot of money. But then the entire world would know of your book and it would sell like crazy, right?

Hmmm…

And if you do sign up with this firm, or one of its associate companies, be prepared for the hard sell via a constant stream of phone calls and emails.

Certainly, whichever way you look at it, providing services to self-publishers is now a massive business. Of course, the POD side of the business is only part of it – more about the ebook version in the next section – but estimates of numbers of books and authors involved are pretty staggering for old-timers like me.

In 2013, a media technology company called New Publisher House published a report which suggested that the self-publishing market is worth $52 billion a year, which is twice that of traditional publishing.

The report also estimates (and they can only be estimates) that the number of aspiring authors who have completed manuscripts of books is more than 100 times the number of actual published authors. And self-published titles currently going on sale are 8 times the number of new titles in mainstream publishing.

Even if you divide these figures by two (or ten?), they still amount to a huge amount of authors, books, and money.

4.2 Here come the ebooks

Ebooks have been around for well over ten years, but in the early days they were mostly made available in pdf form, or as Word files. Most people didn’t seem to care for reading fiction – or long-form non-fiction – on a computer; and in those days computers were all desktop models. So most ordinary members of the public didn’t really expect ebooks to take off.

Except, that is, for a few far-sighted souls. Consider the US firm Renaissance E Books, which was founded in 1997. This firm was undoubtedly one of the earliest publishers of ebooks on the web. In 2003 I signed a number of contracts with Renaissance to republish some of my own books in new digital formats; these contracts were models of their kind. In 2013, when I wanted to concentrate all my ebooks in one place, I was able to claim back the rights with no problems, and I republished the books again via Kindle.

The ebook revolution can be said, for all practical purposes, to have begun on 19 November 2007, when Amazon first offered the Kindle for sale. The Kindle was the first little computer thingy which was designed principally for reading ebooks, and there must have been a bunch of people out there waiting for it because it sold out in five and a half hours. Even at $399. The device remained out of stock for the next five months.

This event was the catalyst for another vast change in the book-publishing universe.

It took a while for the Kindle to catch on. Lots of people swore that they really didn’t want to read books on some weird little gadget. Nothing like the feel of paper, et cetera, et cetera. But as soon as they got one they were on it day and night.

Ditto the writers. At first it was, Oh, I really want the validation of a traditional publisher. Any fool can shove things up on Kindle, there are no standards, full of rubbish, who would offer anything at 99 cents if it was any good? And so forth.

Well, let’s have a look at how popular the Kindle is now (and of course there are other devices which do the same thing).

Amazon itself doesn’t issue any sales figures, but Morgan Stanley (a merchant bank with its ear close to the ground) estimates that Amazon sold $3.57 billion worth of Kindle ereaders and tablets in 2012, and $4.5 billion worth of Kindle devices in 2013. Best guess for 2014 is $5 billion.

And how many books do you think the average Kindle owner buys, and at what average price? Take a look at your own device. Even allowing for those freebies that you’ve got on there, it’s still going to be quite a lot of money.

By the summer of 2010, Amazon was telling us that, in the previous three-month period, it had sold 143 Kindle ebooks for every 100 hardcover books. So much for all those readers who swore that they much preferred the feel of a book, would never switch to Kindle, can’t see the attraction, blah, blah, umpety blah.

The writers were, as I say, a bit slow to catch on. I wasn’t exactly lightning fast myself. But before long I became a passionate advocate. In my monthly column for the UK’s Writing Magazine I have been pointing out, over and over again, that this is (useful cliché) a golden age for writers.

We are in the early morning (dawn has gone by) of a new age of limitless digital opportunity. And unless you have lived through several decades of doing things the old way, and have experienced the pain and heartache which accompany such efforts, you just can’t imagine how lucky you are.

Today it is no longer necessary for writers to slave away for years, knocking on countless doors of agents and publishers, only to face continual rejection. Today – right now – writers no longer need to bother about agents and publishers. They can do it all themselves. They can write a book and publish it in ebook or paperback form without having to persuade a single soul to help them, or spend a penny piece on the process. What is more they can sometimes go from frequently rejected unknown to big-selling superstar in just a few months – using exactly the same book!

Here is just one example.

The Mill River Recluse is a novel by Darcie Chan. And when you look this lady up you find that hers is an absolutely classic story of the digital age.

It took her three years to complete the book, after which she tested it out on her family and friends, polished it up, and sent it out to traditional publishers. Got absolutely nowhere. Scores of rejections. Sent it out to dozens of agents, with the same result. Then one top-class agent took her on (Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord). Laurie sent it to all her best contacts, over a further two-year period. But still no sale.

By that time Darcie had become aware of this new-fangled digital self-publishing business. So she gave it a try. She edited the book herself, did her own formatting, designed her own cover, and handled her own publicity.

The book was published as a Kindle ebook in May 2011. In June, she was thrilled when 100 copies had been sold. After that, aided by some hard work on marketing, and a little bit of advertising, things began to snowball, until in the latter part of the year the book was selling several thousand copies a day.

At the end of 2011, when the figures were added up, The Mill River Recluse turned out to be the fourth biggest-selling book on the whole of Amazon in 2011. These figures were achieved with no paper edition at all. It was ‘just’ an ebook. And one that had been repeatedly rejected by the gatekeepers of traditional publishing.

What distinguished this book from ten thousand others? Ah, if only we knew. All we can say, with any confidence, is that sometimes a book will find its readers and really take off. But mostly it won’t.

If you really aren’t familiar with any other big-time self-published successes, google the names Anne Hocking, John Locke, Hugh Howey, and Joe Konrath. There are plenty of others.

4.3 The effects of ecommerce on publishers

Just to remind you, this is a book about literary agents. And in Part 4 we are primarily considering the impact on agents of the recent digital developments in printing and publishing.

Sections 4.1 and 4.2 outlined the far-reaching effects of print-on-demand and ebook technology respectively. So now it’s time to look more directly at the impact that these events have had on publishers, because the publishers are the group of firms with which the agents interact most closely. Perhaps even more closely than they work with authors. Thus the impact of change on publishers has powerful effects on agents too.

Let’s see what has happened to publishers in the last 15 years, and how they have responded. Then we’ll look at the knock-on effects on agents, and what changes they have made, simply in order to survive.

Historically speaking, publishers were themselves jumped-up little interlopers. In the early days of printed books there were simply authors and printers. The author wrote a book and then took it along to his local printer, where he struck some sort of a deal. Before long the printers found it convenient to become printer-booksellers. The printing machine was in the back room of a house on a busy street, and the front room was turned into a shop to sell the products.

It was only later that some unscrupulous fellows who called themselves publishers wormed their way into this perfectly satisfactory existing arrangement. Mind you, the memory of how they’d done that didn’t stop the publishers from complaining bitterly about a new set of middlemen, the agents, when the agents likewise slid themselves artfully in between the writers and the publishers.

Now the really fascinating thing about the twenty-first century book scene is this. Within 15 years it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that, for narrative fiction and non-fiction (the sort which does not require any pictures or complicated footnotes), ebooks are an ideal medium. And, where ebooks are concerned, neither the agents nor the publishers are required at all. For ebooks there are authors, and the printer-bookseller (let’s say Kindle-Amazon). And then there’s the reader. That’s the bare minimum; all else is distraction.

This reduction in the number of parties involved (and hence in those taking a slice of the money) even has a fancypants name: it’s called disintermediation.

The possibility of disintermediation has come as a nasty shock to some publishers and agents. And some of us, I’m sorry to say, find it hard to resist having a damn good laugh. But the agents and publishers can’t say they weren’t warned.

Around the turn of the century, Jason Epstein wrote a book entitled Book Business; in the US it was published 2001. This book was an examination of present practice in publishing, and also provided a far-sighted glimpse into the future. Epstein was unusually well qualified to write such a book, because he had been editorial director of Random House, in New York, for forty years.

It was also around the turn of the century that I myself, in England, was setting up small publishing company, mainly to publish my own books, under a variety of pen-names; I intended to take full advantage of the new POD technology. This project involved me talking to wholesalers, printers, booksellers, other publishers, library staff, and, not least, readers. Wherever I went I asked as many people as I could whether they had read Epstein’s Book Business. I never found anyone who had.

This did not surprise me, because by then I had concluded that the people who worked in the book business were, as individuals, a pleasure to know; they were people whom you would welcome as neighbours, and perhaps even as suitors for your daughter’s hand. But as professionals, profit-makers, long-term business strategists… Hopeless. Clueless beyond redemption.

Even when his book was published, Epstein had already concluded that successful writers didn’t need really publishers at all. People like Stephen King and Danielle Steel, with massively successful track records, they could quite easily have cut free from agents and publishers, and could have bought in such talent as they needed, in terms of editors, book designers, printers, book distributors, and so forth. By doing so they would probably have earned a great deal more at the end of the day. In practice, however, at that stage, they all chose to continue doing things the old way – but that was presumably because it suited their convenience to do so. (Either that or they weren’t paying any attention either.)

That arrangement has not quite come to fruition yet, but there is now a contract in force between Xerox and Kodak to run such a facility through the Kodak photographic printing shops.

Summary: Since 2000, developments in digital technology have given writers, agents, publishers, printers, and – not least – readers, plenty to think about.

Writers are, I repeat (because it bears repeating) no longer obliged to go knocking on agents’ doors if they don’t want to; they don’t have to sign less than generous publishers’ contracts if they don’t want to; publishers have tried hard to make truckloads of money by illegally conspiring to fix the prices of ebooks, and have failed, resulting in multi-million dollar fines from the US department of Justice; and readers have discovered that digital ebook readers are a very convenient way to carry around books, and that they can buy lots of good reading at modest prices, or even get ebooks free.

4.3.1 Some real-life examples of how life has become difficult for publishers

In 2010, Jason Epstein’s statement, that writers don’t really need publishers at all, was validated, at least in respect of popular non-fiction.

It was in that year that the marketing guru Seth Godin, author of 12 print bestsellers that have been translated into 33 languages, announced that in future he will no longer work through traditional publishers. Godin argues that, in an ebook world, there are viable ways of cutting publishers out of the loop. (Thus disintermediation ceases to be a concept and now becomes a fact.) In future, Godin and others like him will be able to reach people just as effectively, if not more so, without traditional publishers, and will end up making more money.

Prior to coming to this conclusion, Godin had been talking to many established print publishers, and he was unimpressed by what he found. ‘Most of them looked at me like I was nuts for being an optimist. One CEO worked as hard as she could to restrain herself, but failed and almost threw me out of her office by the end. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken at the fear I saw.’

In the three or four years since that time, there have been numerous lesser known authors who have come to the same conclusion as Seth Godin. They have decided to go their own way, without benefit of agent or traditional publisher.

Here’s a minor example from the UK. In 2012, Janet MacLeod Trotter’s novel The Tea Planter’s Daughter was one of the top ten bestselling Kindle ebooks on Amazon.co.uk.

This book was first published in the UK, in hardback, by Headline in 2007, when it had the title The Tea Planter’s Lass; a paperback came a year later. (Just in case you’re new to this business, let me say that Headline is a major UK publisher of commercial fiction, and many authors would give a couple of teeth to be put on their list.) In addition to the hardback and paperback editions, there were also CD and cassette versions of a talking-book edition, and a large-print edition from Magna.

What Janet MacLeod Trotter had done was republish an old book in ebook form, given it a new cover and a slightly different title, and had made it into a big hit.

Today, if you look at Janet MacLeod Trotter’s own web site, you will see that she is the author of 16 books which were originally published through Headline, beginning in 1993; most of these fall into the family saga or women’s fiction category. She also writes crime fiction under the name J.M. MacLeod.

So – one traditionally published author, with a successful if minor career, has gone indie.

This trend seems to be catching on. Or at any rate, writers are now well aware of the possibilities, if not actually choosing to go that route.

The 2014 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey provides the best data we have so far. More than 9,000 writers were asked to describe their experiences and intentions.

Of the aspiring writers who had completed a manuscript and submitted it to either agents or editors, only one third were determined to pursue the traditional route and no other. Roughly two thirds of the authors were open to digital possibilities.

Self-published authors represented nearly two thirds of those in the survey who had achieved publication by one means or another. So, using the new technology, these particular writers had found a way to reach readers with stories which might otherwise never have been published. Thank you publishers (perhaps), but goodbye.

To be fair, we have to note that there was traffic in both directions. Some traditionally published writers had gone indie, and some indies had signed traditional contracts if offered.

The message is surely clear. Traditional publishers can no longer depend on writers assuming that the traditional route to readers is the only one.

Outcome: Traditional publishers are deeply worried about their profits and are seeking more or less any means, however dubious, to improve the situation. In other industries, even some household names have been swept away by digital change, and publishers, with the rarest of exceptions, are not household names.

4.4 The nature of the publishers’ responses

How did publishers respond to all this? The comments set out here are those of an external observer, of course. Insiders might give you a different perspective, if they were prepared to speak frankly.

4.4.1 Denial

As far as I can see, the publishers’ response began with denial. Can’t possibly happen here. Then it moved to a mood of concern, bordering upon panic, as exhibited by those publishers who were interviewed by Seth Godin in 2010.

4.4.2 Collude with other publishers not to cut each other’s throats

Next came a sense of being overtaken by the inevitable, plus a truly ludicrous attempt to fix the prices of ebooks. If we must have these ghastly ebook editions, they seem to have said to themselves, let’s make sure they really pull in the cash.

Experienced media lawyers such as C.E. Petit could hardly believe that publishers could be so stupid. In their blind rush to grab every penny going, they as good as stuck up a placard saying, Look at us, aren’t we clever? The fix is in, but you’ll never prove it.

Oops. The Department of Justice didn’t have much trouble with that one.

4.4.3. In the case of existing contracts: grab all the rights possible

Next move, grab all the rights you can. Many publishers began to issued addendums to existing contracts (or addenda if you were taught Latin). These addendums, all too often, seize rights which the publisher did not own before, and, even if they did own the rights, take a bigger percentage of the income.

4.4.4 Make new contracts less favourable to writers

Bright idea by several publishers simultaneously – they would have us believe. Do not offer advances on the scale of former times. Avoid holding auctions, which make a publisher bid against other publishers and thus pushes the price up.

Another move: Tighten up all new contracts offered to new writers. In particular, fix the new clauses so that no writer ever gets her rights back; the contract will last for the author’s life plus 70 years. (Or until the politicians are bribed enough to extend the term of copyright even further. It will have to be bribery because there aren’t any good arguments for making copyright last any longer than it does already.)

Dazzle the writers with contract complexity so that the fact that they are signing for the full period of copyright might not be noticed. The newbies are going to be so delighted by being offered a contract by the famous Bootsie & Snudge that they won’t care. And their agent, in the circumstances, might not notice it either. Or might notice it and choose not to mention it. (Agents are desperate for income too, you know.)

The thing is, you see, a publisher never knows when a book might succeed against all expectations, so their present view is that it is best to lock up the book, and the author, for ever. Makes it so much easier to cover all the possibilities.

‘Make no mistake,’ said Jason Epstein of publishing, ‘this is gambling.’ Which is why the prospect of low prices for ebooks is so scary to publishers: if they are the gambler placing scores of bets, and hoping that one occasional big-time winner will more than cover their losses, low prices are bad news. That is why they want to pay authors barely a third of the royalty offered to indies by Amazon. So it becomes more and more essential to have that author tightly bound in an unbreakable contract.

Harry Potter, for example, was absolutely not recognised as a hit when he first appeared. The famous J.K. Rowling’s vast money-earning machine was rejected by every publisher in London bar one, and was bought eventually for a mere £2,500.

And you never know how many years might go by before even a small and obscure book starts to earn serious money.

Example: The Gently novels by Alan Hunter. In 1955, the English writer Alan Hunter published his first crime novel featuring Inspector Gently. He went on to produce 46 of them in all, the last one appearing in 1999.

Alan Hunter, it is fair to say, was never more than a journeyman writer. His books were never big hits on the Inspector Morse scale, and Constable, his final publisher, used to print about 2,000 copies of books like that; they mostly sold to libraries.

In 2007, BBC TV started to serialise the Gently books, but it was all a bit late in the day for Alan because he died in 2005. And now, in 2014, the TV detective has just begun his sixth series, and it is being shown in 16 other countries. Not a huge pot of gold but a nice little earner, long after the author has gone.

Still on contracts: Publishers are now making quite sure to include a non-compete clause. This makes it impossible for a writer to sell anything elsewhere which might compete with the book offered for sale by Bootsie & Snudge. In fact, a carefully drafted non-compete clause can prevent you from ever writing in the same genre during the term of your publishing contract – which, as we have noted above, is likely to be your life plus 70 years.

According to media lawyer David Vandagriff, ‘some publishers attempt to disguise their non-compete clauses by burying them back in the contract boilerplate that inexperienced authors and some agents don’t read.’

At this point, pause for breath.

What else can a poor-but-honest big-time publisher do to pull in some income?

Ah yes. Get the writer to pay. Pay for a lot more than she does already. Persuade the writer to pay her own way on book-signing sessions and sales gimmicks of that sort.

And – now this is a really good one – set up digital-only imprints under the traditional-publisher framework!

4.4.5 In-house digital imprints

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!

Somebody somewhere had a Eureka moment, and decided to develop a cunning plan. Instead of losing potential winners to the self-published arena, why not give the reasonably competent writers an opportunity to be published by the famous Bootsie & Snudge, but make them pay for it! And go on paying for it.

Once devised this scheme caught on.

Consider, for instance, the once noble and respected Random House. In my youth, to be published by Random House was a dream seldom accomplished by all but a select few. However, in 2013 RH announced four new digital imprints for various genres: Hydra, Alibi, Loveswept, and Flirt. In order to publicise their innovation, and to attract writers to the scheme, they felt obliged to make public certain aspects of their contracts.

I think it is fair to say that the terms of these contracts were greeted by experienced writers with utter disgust and contempt.

For example, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America issued a public letter to RH which said, among other uncomplimentary things, ‘Your attempt to shift to the author costs customarily borne by the publisher is, simply, outrageous and egregious…. Hydra intends to act in a predatory manner towards authors, and in particular toward newer authors who may not have the experience to recognize the extent to which your contract is beyond the pale of standard publishing practices.’

I hope I don’t need to say more.

If you are initially attracted to the idea of being published on a digital imprint organised and run by a big-time publisher, do yourself a favour and google widely on the nature of that contract in particular, and similar contracts in general.

The conclusion that you are likely to come to is, in my opinion, that the digital imprint will do nothing for you that you couldn’t do for yourself via Kindle Direct Publishing, or something similar, and the royalty earned on any sales which do result through the big-time publisher will be lower than for a do-it-yourself enterprise.

4.4.4 Yet more cunning plans

Oh. And offer a few other cunning ways to get authors to pay.

Such as offering writers a chance to learn to write.

Once upon a time there was a famous UK publisher known as Faber & Faber – usually abbreviated to the one Faber. Founded in the 1920s, the firm gradually acquired a reputation as the home of literary quality. Since I am a vulgarian with no interest in literary fiction, I personally only used to read the crime fiction which they occasionally published; they went slumming in that area presumably to avoid bankruptcy, because the other stuff certainly didn’t sell.

An early director of Faber was the poet T.S. Eliot. And if you haven’t heard of Eliot, you have almost certainly heard of the famous stage musical Cats. This was based on Eliot’s 1939 book light verse, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It is said – and I do not doubt it – that the royalties from Cats are the only source of income, in recent years, which has kept Faber afloat.

Recently, however, things must have been getting really tight. To increase income, the company has therefore established the Faber Academy. This occupies the fourth floor of the Faber building and purports to teach writers how to write.

And it works! Allegedly. ‘Faber Academy courses have started careers for bestsellers like SJ Watson and Rachel Joyce,’ says the web site, ‘and helped many more find agents.’

Details of fees are not easy to find on the web site, but the online novel-writing six-month course offers fortnightly sessions, one to one feedback, and peer-review sessions. The cost is £2500.

In early 2014, Random House UK has announced ‘its first online writing course, Creative Writing for Beginners.’ Cost: £499.

4.5 The effect of ecommerce on agents

4.5.1 The toughest job in the business

The impact of the digital revolution on publishers has had similar effects on agents: and the nature of the problem for agents is essentially the same: it’s money.

The money is not flowing in as promptly as it used to, and when it does arrive the payment has shrunk.

I have often said, and if I haven’t said it before in this book I will say it now, that being a literary agent has always been the toughest job in the book business.

For one thing, the job is inevitably demanding on time. Someone has to read the submissions from aspiring writers. And even if you employ a team of interns (more suckers prepared to work for no pay in order to ‘gain experience’), you have absolutely no guarantee that they can tell Stork from butter (or shit from Shinola, if you’re American). So in the end the agent just has to read some stuff herself. Which takes time, if you do the job properly.

Then you may get involved in rewrites with the author. Maybe.

Historically speaking, some of the very best agents have been willing to work closely with their writers to get the work into ideal shape for submission. The best plan has always been to submit a book to the right publisher at a point where not a word needs to be changed.

(Incidentally, the comment above is in danger of ignoring survivorship bias. Yes, it is true that some very successful agents have worked closely with their authors. But what of the agents who conscientiously committed endless time to their clients, but who happened, through no fault of their own, to have some Mafia books ready to submit at precisely the moment when the fashion for godfather books faded? Such agents failed and went out of business, despite their best efforts.)

So, before we proceed to be somewhat critical of agents, in terms of their responses to digital challenges, let us remember that theirs is always a demanding and exhausting calling. You need both physical and emotional resilience. A private income wouldn’t hurt, either.

4.5.2 The specific difficulties of the digital era

As we have seen, publishers who are suffering from digital difficulties tend to (i) reduce the size of advances paid to midlist authors; (ii) try to reduce or eliminate their need to compete with other publishers for the books with obvious commercial potential; (iii) increase their share of the proceeds by varying the terms of in both past contracts and new ones; and (iv) concentrate on celebrity books, or books with some sort of ‘platform’, while ignoring the aspiring nobodies.

All of these manoeuvres impact upon agents’ cash flow, and agents tend to have much smaller reserves than publishers. If things turn bad they are unlikely to be able to survive for five lean years and then bounce back.

Agents are supposed to understand contracts and be in a position to judge whether they are ‘fair’ or not. But, in these more difficult times, they may think twice before they complain about harsher contractual terms. For one thing, writers come and go, but publishers tend to live forever – in one form or another. So, complaining too hard may mean that an agent becomes known as a pain in a sensitive place, and future submissions are ignored, or put at the bottom of the pile.

Furthermore, however well intentioned agents may be, it becomes difficult for them to work with authors whose work is not quite there yet. They can’t afford the time. If they do submit such work to publishers, it may well be turned away. Sterling Lord remarks, in his memoirs, that in recent years, publishers have taken to flatly rejecting books which they might once have been willing to sign up and wait while the polish was applied.

Some experienced writers, while sympathising with the agents’ predicament to some extent, feel that agents have recently become all too pally with the publishers.

For example: In 2012, the Association of Authors’ Representatives wrote an open letter asking all agents and writers to write to the US Department of Justice, saying that they objected to the lawsuit which the DOJ had filed against the major publishers. You will remember that the DOJ was pursuing the top publishers for conspiring to fix the prices of ebooks at an unfairly high level, in a way which was contrary to consumers’ interests (and contrary to antitrust laws).

This letter from the AAR generated immediate and angry responses from quite a number of experienced writers. What the agents should have been doing, many writers claimed, was looking after the interests of their clients, not speaking up for ‘the enemy’.

Dean Wesley Smith, for example, is a writer who has published 100 popular novels and well over 100 short stories. Smith said of the AAR letter: ‘Now agents have gone so far as to flat out represent publishers. Right out in public. No more hiding their true intent now.’ Result, said Smith: ‘Smart writers are running in droves from agents.’

The US lawyer C.E. Petit, who specialises in copyright law and authors’ issues, was brutal. The AAR, he said, ‘demonstrates its inability to understand law – despite its members’ obligation to look out for the legal interests of its clients…. The letter is not just nonsense. It reflects disdain for the AAR’s clients, to whom each AAR member owes a duty of loyalty.’

C.E. Petit also pointed out that it was ironic that the AAR’s predecessor ‘got smacked – hard, and deservedly – for antitrust violations, resulting eventually in its demise.’

Where does this leave agents? It certainly leaves them feeling less interested in aspiring authors than in years gone by. Instead they are scratching around for really commercial projects. Another example offered by Sterling Lord: he describes phoning an editor and beginning to pitch a book to her. But before he had got very far she interrupted him. ‘What’s the platform?’ she wanted to know.

In other words, is this author a TV soap actress? Or a world-class expert in his field (if it’s non-fiction). Can we guarantee an interview on Oprah? (Or whatever the new Oprah may be.) If not, thanks, but no thanks. If you’re a provincial nobody, you’re not even worth a long phone call. We’re busy people, here at Bootsie & Snudge.

Faced with these kind of problems, agents may well begin to wish they had the balls of Swifty Lazar. He, you may recall, used to put together big-platform books without actually consulting the star name until the deal was agreed in principle. Few agents of today can do that.

4.6 The nature of the agents’ responses

4.6.1 Desperate doings: rogues, villains, and improvisers

From the very beginning there have been agents with sticky fingers. Remember J.M. Barrie being parted from £18,000? But in recent years there have grown up a series of entrepreneurs who have abandoned all serious pretence of actually doing any serious agenting. Instead they make a living from suckers.

At this point I have to say, as tactfully as possible, that young and inexperienced writers are all too often their own worst enemies. The idea of signing up with an agent, any agent, offers them (they think) a wonderful opportunity to impress their family and friends.

Fortunately, a remedy is at hand.

For a good many years, the writers’ organisation known as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has operated a web site named Writer Beware. Go to this web site and read what it has to say about the multiplicity of crooked schemes and proposals which are floated temptingly under the noses of aspiring writers.

For your own health, it is absolutely essential to read all the Writer Beware pages on agents, and on publishers too, for that matter. I am not going to reinvent the wheel by listing all the various scams here. But just one paragraph from Writer Beware will act as a taster:

‘Dishonest agents prey on writers by charging fees, promoting their own paid services, engaging in kickback schemes, shilling for vanity publishers, and misrepresenting their knowledge and expertise. These agents’ income doesn’t derive from selling manuscripts to publishers, but from extracting money from clients.’

This paragraph comes from a site which, in my opinion, leans over backwards to be fair to those it criticises.

4.6.2 Writers’ contracts with agents

In the old days, at least in the UK, there was no written contract between an agent and his clients. I never exchanged letters or signed any other formal document binding me to an agent, and no one ever suggested that I should. It was all done informally. And when it came time to say goodbye, which it does, surprisingly frequently, it was again done in a polite and friendly manner, with good wishes expressed (sincerely) on both sides.

Which is not to say that the ‘informal’ agreement might not have been viewed as a contract in a court of law, but I never heard of a such a case going to court. For one thing, the money involved would frequently have been so small as to make it insane to run up vast lawyers’ bills.

Frequently, but not always. We will come to Harry Potter in a moment.

However… Times change, and the US is a far more litigious country than the UK. So you may not be too surprised to hear that, in today’s market, formal contracts between agents and writers are often the norm. It is now common practice for authors who do strike lucky (?) and find an agent who is willing to represent them, to be faced with signing on the dotted line.

And perhaps the most useful thing I can say at this point is, Hold! Pause! Do not sign! At least not yet. Not till you know exactly what you are signing. And perhaps not even then.

If you google around, as I have on your behalf, you can find reference to one big-name agency which has a five-page agreement for the intending author to sign.

Five pages. And on one of them it says that the agency is entitled to commissions earned by, paid to, or credited to the author (or, incidentally, any entity owned by or controlled by the author), ‘in perpetuity.’

Note that, this is not some fly-by-night elementary scam. This is a serious legal document drawn up and offered by highly paid lawyers representing a major firm of agents with major writers on their books. And they want your money – or some of it – in perpetuity.

Sounds like a long time to me.

The best advice I have seen offered by highly experienced writers, with decades of experience, is that before you sign any such agreement you should seek out a well qualified media lawyer (sometimes known as an intellectual-property, or IP, lawyer). And get him to check it over. Twice. I can only agree.

There are, reportedly, a few agents (probably small ones) who still operate on the handshake model. You may be able to find one. But the attraction of being linked to a household name (in publishing circles) is a strong one.

An experienced observer (and I like to think I am one such) can visualise so many potential complications in the author-agent relationship that mine eyes glaze over.

But one such complication is surely obvious to everyone. What happens at the parting of the ways?

The luckiest agent of all time was Christopher Little, in the UK. His office was one of those which received a submission from a person by the name of J.K. Rowling.

Rowling’s book was some sort of weirdo magic spells kids’ story, and it had already been rejected by numerous other agencies. However, according to a long-ago article in Publishing News (a UK weekly long since deceased), young Harry Porter caught the eye of Little’s secretary. (You know how it is on a slow day – you look around for anything to read.) She got interested in the ms and shoved it in front of her boss.

The rest is history. And indeed it is history now. Little took on Ms Rowling, with no great faith, and his lack of real interest was soon echoed by publishers. But one eccentric liked the book and published it. Small time.

It was the kids wot done it. About a year after HP first appeared, I was in a bookshop with my wife, looking for a birthday present for a nephew aged about 11. Down in the children’s section, two small boys of the right age group were flicking through the books on a table.

I outlined the problem. ‘What would you recommend?’

Both boys put their finger on Harry Potter. Which I bought.

So did millions of others, acting on playground word of mouth, and it would be interesting to speculate how many millions Mr Little made as a result. The word on the street is that it was a normal-terms deal, 15% for the UK and 20% of everything else.

Obviously, that sort of arrangement could not last for ever, not with all those millions sloshing around, and after about 15 years (1996-2011) the agent was ‘dumped’. That’s the way it was put in the Daily Telegraph in 2012, so it must be true.

The Telegraph report went on to describe Mr Little as ‘the enigmatic agent who spotted the potential of her first manuscript.’

Ms Rowling, the report said, had managed to avoid going to court with her ex-agent. Instead, the two parties had reached an amicable agreement to separate, ‘the details of which are confidential.’

Well, I dare say Ms Rowling can afford this settlement, whatever it cost. But it would be nice to foresee such a possibility, and to forestall it if possible. Wouldn’t it?

4.6.3 Contracts with publishers as negotiated by agents

Given the hard times we live in, agents are obliged to pay close attention to their position in the long term as well as the short term.

Should an agent ever negotiate a contract with a publisher, while acting on your behalf, you can be quite sure that the contract will recognise the fact that the agent has been appointed as your representative, and that all royalties due under the contract will be paid to him; and then, we hope, to you.

Such a clause will probably also specify that this arrangement applies for the life of the contract. So, even if, in the course of time, you replace agent 1 with agent 2, this arrangement will probably still apply. I say probably because media lawyers are adept at counting the angels on the head of a pin, and they get paid by the hour, you know. So there well be much debate about the precise meaning of such a clause, both in court and on the courtroom steps.

Suppose your new agent, agent 2, sells the film rights of a book which was first published under a contract written by agent 1. How does that work out?

I’ve never been in that happy position, but I suspect that, if you’re not careful, you will end up like one of those not-too-bright heavyweight boxers, some of whom sold 110% of themselves over a period of time – boxing not being an occupation which improves the memory.

I wonder how the clause about receiving commission for the life of the contract was interpreted in the case of the contracts written by UK agent Christopher Little.

There are other complications. What happens if you self-publish a book that the agent couldn’t sell for you. Who, if anyone, gets a commission then?

Oh, I tell you, it’s no end of fun being a writer.

4.6.4 Offer courses

Publishers such as Faber are not the only people to have noticed that writers are willing to pay large sums to be taught how to write.

There are, of course, countless universities and colleges which offer degrees in ‘creative writing’. And now the UK literary agency Curtis Brown has joined the club.

‘At London's leading literary agency, authors agents and industry professionals are teaching a new generation of writers.’

Well, there’s an interesting variation on being a boring old agent, plain and simple.

As usual, it’s hard to find a mention of fees for the Curtis Brown academy, but, in internet reports, £2,400 has been suggested as the price.

4.6.5 Conferences: the pay-a-fee-to-find-an-agent circus

L.J. Sellers, a well established full-time novelist, recently blogged that she was no longer going to attend Thrillerfest, which is an annual conference for thriller fans and writers.

Thrillerfest is in any case an expensive conference to attend, and may involve an expensive flight to get there. But what makes L.J. Sellers unwilling to make an appearance there is Agentfest, which is a sub-conference within the larger gathering.

Agentfest, as the name suggests, enables writers to have one-to-one pitching sessions with agents. Well, I say agents. Some disenchanted attendees have noted that those representing the agencies are mostly junior members of staff. Such junior staff are delighted to go to the conference to represent their employers, because they get free room and board and everyone treats them like a goddess. Some newbie writers are thrilled if the agent hands them a business card. However, do I need to add that an enthusiastic response from an agent on the conference floor may later lead to a disappointing letter?

Even more to the point, however, L.J. Sellers has come to the conclusion that anything which encourages new authors to sign with an agent – any agent – is counterproductive. ‘I don’t have anything against agents personally. But their role in publishing has become mostly obsolete… This practice [agents recruiting at conferences] seems unscrupulous.’

4.6.6 Agents turn publisher

We have already noted that some publishers – even the biggest names of all – have gone into business as publishers of ebooks. For a consideration, of course.

And guess what? Quite a few agents have done the same.

First into the act, as far as I can see, was the gentleman from Harvard, Andrew ‘The Jackal’ Wylie.

Whatever else he may be, Wylie is no sort of fool, and as early as 2010 he launched his own ebook publishing initiative, Odyssey Editions. The plan was to work through Amazon to release digital editions of major books by big-time writers who were already represented by the Wylie agency. Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel from the 1950s, Lolita, was among the first.

The Odyssey Editions arrangement was intended to bypass the publishers of the print editions entirely. It would secure (one assumes) a higher royalty for the writer (or the writer’s estate) than would be available if the print publisher owned the digital rights, and published an ebook version. And of course, it would result in a substantially increased share of the proceeds going to the Wylie agency.

I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a spreadsheet analysing the various figures and proving the point about the distribution of income, but, from the outside, that appears to be the way the thinking went.

There were two major problems with this initiative, both of which could have been anticipated.

First, the big publishers were always going to argue that, under the original contracts (sometimes written decades earlier) they already owned and controlled the digital rights, even though the contract didn’t spell that point out in detail because no one had ever heard of digital at that point in time.

Second, the big and powerful publishers are definitely bigger and more powerful than any agency, even a fairly forceful one such as Wylie.

Result? Random House told Wylie, in short order, that unless he stopped playing silly buggers they were not going to do any further business with him. Full stop.

Given that Wylie has 700 clients with books to sell, and given that Random House (now merged with Penguin to form the biggest publisher in the world) was threatening to refuse to consider any new product from said clients, Wylie really had no choice but to back down.

If you look up Vladimir Nabokov’s famous novel Lolita on Amazon.co.uk, you will find that the ebook edition is now published by Penguin.

Odyssey Editions still publishes about 20 ebooks, some of them by famous names. But, given that there are 700 clients, most of whom have a number of books in their backlist, the ebook side of the Wylie agency appears to be, for all practical purposes, defunct.

The Wylie experiment was the first cunning plan to try to rescue the finances of literary agencies, but it was not to be the last.

Other agencies were also experiencing lower sales figures for previously published books (because of the ebook competition); and they simultaneously found that lower advances were being offered for contracts with new writers. So those agencies also began to look at digital publishing.

To cut along story short, at the time of writing (early 2014), about 25 agents have arranged to offer ebook publication to their clients through an arrangement with a canny group of entrepreneurs operating under the name Argo Navis.

Argo Navis is a company which enables agencies to insert themselves, in true agently fashion, in between the writer who wants to self-publish, and the reader. And thereby claim their 15%.

Argo Navis works only with agents. An individual writer cannot approach them himself (should he be foolish enough to want to). However, if an agent has a client who wishes, in effect, to self-publish a book (probably because it can’t be sold as a print book), then the agent can propose the book to Argo Navis.

Subject, one assumes, to some quality checks, Argo Navis will then create an ebook, suitably formatted, and will act as a distributor of that book to various ebook retailers, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple.

Should the book require some professional polish before being ready for market (and instinct tells me that it probably will), Argo Navis can offer editing, cover designs, and formatting services. For a price.

In return for the distribution service for the finished ebook, Argo Navis takes 30% of what’s left after the retailer has taken the first slice (which is often 30% of the sale price). Agents will then take 15% of the remainder. For ever. Which of course they have fully earned simply by contacting Argo Navis in the first place, with the suggestion that the book might fit the bill.

That, at any rate, is the way this system seems to work at the time of writing. It is being marketed as ‘agent-curated self-publishing’, and some of the biggest names in the agency business are publicly associated with it.

I dare say that there are, somewhere, some professional writers who think that this is a wonderful scheme, fair to everybody, and an effective way to connect writers with readers. But I must add that most of the professional writers who have made their views known in public media, such as blogs, have greeted this scheme with contempt and suspicion. Furthermore, sales through Argo Navis are reportedly poor: perhaps one copy a month.

I note, in closing this section, that there are experienced observers who think that any attempt on the part of agents to get into the publishing business at all constitutes a breach of agency law. The agents’ job is to represent writers in negotiations with third parties, not to publish the stuff themselves, even through Argo Navis, and especially not if it’s all done on germs which leave only a slim cut to the writers.

It may save you time if I say once again that, so far as I am aware, none of these agent-operated ebook publishing arrangements do anything for you that you cannot do for yourself, free of charge; you just have to take a few hours to train yourself in how to do it.

I have published over 60 ebooks so far, and the more you do the easier it gets. I design all my own covers and act as my own editor. So the cost to me of 60+ ebooks, so far, has been zero.

4.6.7 Geese for plucking

There may have been times, while reading this fascinating saga, when you came to the conclusion that I might, just possibly, be a tad cynical.

Ha! If only you knew. The great irony of my life is that I have always been considered a cynic, from schooldays onwards. But the truth is that I have always been naïve. I have seldom been able to see through the dishonest ploys of others. And so it remains today. If I seem to be laying on the dark warnings with a heavy hand, try reading what some others have to say. Experienced judges at that.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: ‘Agents are trying to save their jobs, and, unfortunately, many of them are willing to do so on the back of the writers they represent.’

David Vandagriff, explaining why vanity publishers are not noticeably worse than traditional publishers: ‘Each side reflects the same attitude toward authors – geese to be plucked.’

PART 5: Do you really need an agent?

5.1 The problem of finding readers

In the twenty-first century, a writer’s problem is this: How can I best find readers? And preferably, of course, readers who will pay a sensible sum for reading my work. Do I really need an agent to achieve that?

Generally speaking, I would say you don’t.

If you’ve read religiously through this ebook – or even if you’ve just scanned it – you will have noticed that there are plenty of writers who have had bad experiences with agents. We tend to hear from them. The satisfied clients (and there must be some, somewhere) tend to be too busy writing books to say anything in public.

But just consider: Twenty years ago, it was well nigh impossible to get a traditional publisher to take any notice of you unless your work was submitted through an agent. A covering letter from an agent meant that the publisher had some vague guarantee that the book was of broadly publishable standard.

Then, there was no other way to get to readers. Either you went through a traditional publisher or, realistically, you had no chance of connecting with readers.

And then, along came the internet, digital printing technology, ecommerce, and all like hat. Everything changed.

Today there are clear and well defined ways for a novelist to find readers – readers, moreover, who will pay money for reading your book, provided it is sensibly presented and priced.

So you don’t, you really, really don’t, need an agent to get started as a writer.

Or to continue, actually.

But it is conceivable that, at a certain point in your writerly progress through life, you might find it useful and profitable to use an agent to sell foreign-language rights and audio rights; and, yes, even film rights. Maybe.

And I don’t think I’m going to say much more than that. But I will quote some other people’s views on the matter.

5.2 Some forthright views

I do think I need to stress to you that there are some experienced professional writers around, people with successful track records in traditional publishing, who are absolutely adamant that new writers should not go anywhere near an agent’s office. Cross the street and hurry on by, lest they drag you inside.

You don’t have to travel far on the internet to meet the anti-agents. Here, for a start, is Dean Wesley Smith. In a recent blog post he wrote as follows:

‘Are there reasons to have an agent in 2014? Nope. Not a one…. They will only get in your way.’

However, says Dean, if you insist on ignoring what he thinks, here are some further bits of advice, which you ignore at you peril.

‘Never sign an agency agreement…Never allow them to touch one penny of your money before you do…. Make sure that you can fire the agent on 30 days notice….’ And so on. And this, remember, from a man with 100 novels under his belt.

To balance up the genders, let me introduce Laura Resnick. Writing in 2013, Laura tells us that she has been making her living as a full-time novelist for 25 years. She is a hybrid – that is to say she currently self-publishes her backlist but continues to have a very satisfactory relationship with a traditional publisher for her new books.

On the question of agents, this is Laura’s view:

‘One of the common misconceptions still circulating… is that you need a literary agent for a career in traditional publishing. In my own experience (and in the experience of a growing number of other writers, too) this is a completely false, erroneous, and inaccurate assumption (though one heartily encouraged by most literary agents, for obvious reasons.’

She goes on to point out that she has sold 30 books in her career, mostly to major houses. Of those, she made all but 7 of the sales herself.

Laura then describes some of the tribulations of working with agents, some of who would ‘give up’ after 1-4 rejections, and retire a book for ever, refusing to discuss it or send it out again. Of her many agentless sales, 9 were of books which agents had declined to handle at all, or had refused to send out again after 1-2-3 of their pals turned it down.

5.3 How to make life difficult

If you’re still determined to go your own way, and find yourself an agent, then by all means start to enquire. Buy a copy of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook (in the UK) or The Writers’ Market (US) and draw up a list. Write to the most likely prospect. And then another one. Followed by another one, and another one, possibly for years on end. Agents who are suitably professional and well known are not easily persuaded to take on an as-yet unknown and unpublished writer.

But do beware. In the course of this book I have set out a number of ways in which the relationship between a good agent and a good a writer can go badly rwong. Which is a little joke, of sorts. But things going wrong are not a joke. Not at all. Tread carefully. In the course of this book ebook I have, I hope, given ample indication of the risks and dangers

For the record, and just to leave you in no doubt, I hold no qualification as a career counsellor. Furthermore, I am not in any way, shape or form a lawyer; and a lot of the issues dealt with in this book are essentially legal matters. To get a book published by a traditional publisher you will need, one way or another, to sign a contract. Possibly two: agent, then publisher. And of course you might be so pleased to be offered such a contract that you sign it immediately, without reading any of it.

I consider that to be very unwise. But you should not regard me as any sort of authority on the wisdom or otherwise of doing so. I have a view, but the decisions are ultimately your own, and I’m not responsible for any consequences of your actions.

5.4 Acting as your own agent

If you really do want to be published in ‘proper’ printed form, by a well known traditional firm, then it is perfectly possible, despite what it says on the web sites, and despite what I’ve said earlier, to send in a submission yourself; Laura Resnick demonstrated this point. And, if this submission is drafted and targeted properly, it will stand every bit as much chance of being accepted as will an agented submission.

To repeat: Yes, I know that contradicts what I said earlier, but that’s because I wanted to lead you through this quagmire one step at a time.

If you read the trade magazines in whatever country you live in, and if you read things like Publishers Lunch, and read the reviews in Publishers Weekly, and generally keep your eyes open, you will gradually discover two things.

First, you will learn what kind of books a particular publisher, or imprint, specialises in. For example, Harlequin do romances. Then, you will get to know the names of editors working for that imprint. Some of them are legends in their own lunchtime. And you will discover which editor worked on which book, and which other authors she has on her list.

Gradually, you can build up a small list of editors who might be receptive to your particular book. And then, by one means or another, you can find a way to meet said editor at a conference, perhaps; or get to know someone who knows the editor (never hurts to know someone who is connected); and so on. Writing letters is a last resort.

If you can’t draw up a list of editors like this (which is exactly what an agent would do), then you are in trouble; you are just firing your shotgun into the darkness, whereas what you really need to do is aim a rifle at a very small target.

If you try to submit unsolicited manuscripts to a traditional publisher, without a careful and targeted approach, your parcel will just bounce back. In Hollywood they won’t even open it.

If anyone in traditional publishing nibbles, or preferably long before, you should also read my ebook A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing, so that you know what you are letting yourself in for.

And, should a contract appear in the post, find yourself an experienced lawyer who specialises in intellectual property, and have the contract checked. Carefully.

If you’ve done your homework, you will know that the contract has good points and bad points. But don’t rush to sign it unless you understand the thing properly.

5.6 Digital self-publishing

My general view, as of 2014, is that the smart writer is not thinking about traditional publishers at all (apart from watching bemused as they slowly slide down the drain). The smart writer is looking at being an indie publisher, working through Kindle and similar outlets.

I started with Smashwords, but I soon changed to Amazon and the Kindle. And there are now hundreds, possibly thousands, of books advising you how to publish through Kindle Direct Publishing. This isn’t one of them.

Start with Amazon’s own guides on how to format and publish your book(s), because, as far as I can figure out, they really do want you to publish your book with them. They are trying to make it easy.

Do I need to point out that you don’t have to start with a full-length novel? Perhaps I do. Personally I have published a couple of dozen single short stories or novellas (say 10,000 to 15,000 words), with more to follow. I think it unlikely that at my age I shall ever again write a full-length novel. It would be too tiring.

5.6 For goodness’ sake enjoy it

And who is my agent, you may be wondering. Why don’t I recommend him or her?

For the record, and as mentioned in section 1.3, I gave up working through an agent in 1999. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the agents who laboured on my behalf during the previous forty years or so. And I didn’t cease to use an agent because of dissatisfaction with agents as such.

I gave up using an agent because I was fed up with the whole of traditional publishing.

The English agent George Greenfield tells us in his book A Smattering of Monsters that Walter Harrap once actually remarked to him, ‘Ours would be a wonderful job if it weren’t for the authors.’ And that just about sums up the attitude.

As things are, the traditional publishing world is so constructed that, to repeat the distressingly crude words of one anonymous complainant in the UK magazine Publishing News, writers are ‘pissed on from start to finish.’

Since 1999 I have published about 15 paperback and hardback books through various POD facilities, and nearly 70 ebooks. Oh, and I also wrote 1.25 million words about the book business on my blog, the Grumpy Old Bookman. It’s still online, and all free. You can search it for particular topics.

As a result of all that work, have I become rich and famous?

No.

I’m tempted to write ‘Of course not’, because hardly any writers become rich and famous; and, for those that do, it is often a temporary situation and one that brings all kinds of problems in its wake. (If you doubt that, read my earlier ebook, A Writer’s Guide to Success.)

Have I had fun as an indie self-publisher? You bet. Lots of it. I can write exactly what I feel like writing; I can do my own covers (you may think they’re crap, but then so are a lot of those on traditional books); and I run my own marketing (actually I usually do zero marketing because it bores me).

No, I remain largely anonymous, unmobbed in the street, and I face only a modest tax bill at the end of the year. But I have a lot of fun and I answer to no one except my own judgement. After forty years of dealing with traditional publishers, that is, I assure you, a great relief.

The best advice I can give you, in closing, is that if you don’t find writing enjoyable, give it up and start doing something else instead.

APPENDIX

This appendix consists of a list of blogs about books and the book world. There are hundreds of such blogs, but if you start with the ones listed here, and read them on a regular basis, you will soon acquire a thorough knowledge of publishing in all its various forms.

But wait. Before you rush off to subscribe to either of these two magazines, bear in mind that there may be a library near you which already subscribes, and makes the magazine available to the general public. So try that first; it’s a lot cheaper.

The blogs listed below are not in any particular order.

Books Inq. The thoughts of an old literary journalist and his friends.

The Passive Voice. David Vandagriff, media lawyer.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Joe Konrath, a big-time digital success, tells how he does it. And beats up any agents and publishers who say silly things online.

Blog of a Bookslut. Pretty much what it says on the label.

Caustic Cover Critic. Ditto.

David Gaughran. Modern author with forthright views.

Dean Wesley Smith. Author of over 100 novels. A man who works unhealthily hard and tells it like it is.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean’s wife, and amazingly knowledgeable about contracts and other trade secrets.

Digital Book World. Some very well informed commentators.

Mediabistro.com: EbookNewser.

Mediabistro.com: Galleycat. The bit that deals with traditional publishing.

The Digital Reader. The one really essential guide to the new digital universe.

Writer Beware: The Blog.

The Literary Saloon. Deals mainly with literary books, and those translated into English.

The Shatzkin files. Mike Shatzkin, experienced publishing consultant. His Dad was also a major figure in traditional publishing.

Jennifer Jackson. Blog by a US agent. Queries received in 2103: 6,152. New clients taken on in 2013: 2.

Pub Rants. ‘A very nice literary agent indulges in polite rants.’

Janet Reid. Agent.

Dystel & Goderich. Jane Dystel has had a distinguished career in publishing. Now an agent, and by the sound of it one of the more sensible ones.

You may have noticed that I have not provided hyperlinks in the main body of this book. Instead, I have assumed that you quite capable of googling a name or a subject if you wish to know more about something that has been mentioned in the text. And in any case, when you do start googling a name or a subject, you may, serendipitously, come across something which is not only relevant and fascinating, but also so obscure that not even I know about it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Over the years, literary agents have written some interesting books of memoirs, and some have written books on literary technique. Here are a few which are still in print, or available in ebook form.

Blake, Carole. From Pitch to Publication. An important book for those who write for the women’s market.

Lord, Sterling. Lord of Publishing. An overview of US publishing in the latter part of the twentieth century, as seen from a literary agent’s point of view.

Zuckerman, Albert. Writing the Blockbuster Novel. Al was the founder of the Writers House agency, and worked closely with some major bestsellers. This book describes a typical working relationship with Ken Follett. Probably the best single book on fiction writing that you can find. (Apart from my own, of course. Modesty gets you nowhere in the writing business.)

AFTERWORD

May I respectfully inform you that I (Michael Allen, in case you’ve forgotten the name) have written several other ebooks (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are keen to learn more about the technique of writing fiction, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in The Truth about Writing.

On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile is an essay on the pro-am approach to writing. A pro-am is an amateur who works to a professional standard. In other words, not a full-timer, but someone who, in the old days, would have been published in printed form, but who is now far too sensible to doing anything except self-publish via digital outlets.

There are also several other books in the Writer’s Guide series:

A Writer’s Guide to Emotion

A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint

A Writer’s Guide to Style

A Writer’s Guide to Success

A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing

All the above are readily available via Amazon, but only as Kindle ebooks at the time of writing. POD versions may follow.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that I have written in the past, please visit my author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon. Just searching for my name alone will just result in confusion, because it is so common. Hundreds of books by various Michaels and Allens will not help you.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO EMOTION:

Here’s the Key to Selling More Fiction

Michael Allen

***

1. About this book

There is a story told about the nineteenth-century actor, Edmund Kean.

Kean was standing in the wings one night, watching his troupe of actors performing a Shakespearian tragedy. Standing beside him was his son, Charlie. Peeking through the curtains, Kean could see that the audience was absolutely rapt, their attention focused on the action; some of them had tears in their eyes.

‘We’re doing the trick, Charlie,’ Kean whispered to his son. ‘We’re doing the trick.’

What Kean meant by this was that he and his fellow actors were achieving their aim: they were making the audience feel a powerful emotion. And as a consequence of that, they were making themselves better known and in greater demand as actors.

Making readers feel such emotions is the most important aspect of a fiction-writer’s craft. Emotion is what holds the reader to the page (‘I couldn’t put the book down’), and it is the emotion conveyed by the final few pages that prompts the reader to recommend a book to their friends. In short, if you want to succeed as a fiction writer, learn how to generate emotion in your readers.

What you are reading now is a book that will help you to do just that. The principal aim of this present ebook is to make you aware of the central role of emotion in anything that might reasonably be called creative writing. Understanding what emotion is, how it is generated in life, and, above all, how to generate emotion in your readers is absolutely essential if a writer is to achieve success – and this is true however you choose to define the word success.

Who is likely to benefit from reading this book?

Anyone with an interest in writing fiction, whether it’s a short story or a multi-volume saga. In addition, anyone who writes for the theatre, television, or film will find here much food for thought.

2. About the author

If you are presented with a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who is the author of said book, and what makes him any sort of authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am 74 years old. I was first paid for writing for a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963, exactly 50 years ago this year, since when I have written at least 25 others (under my own name and several pen names).

I have written half a dozen non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers. In related fields, I have written various drama scripts which have been professionally produced on the stage, radio, and television.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence saw something of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s.

As of today I have about 60 separate publications available in Kindle format, under various names.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing; many of the examples that I give will therefore be from an English context (though the rest of the world doesn’t behave any differently). All spelling follows English conventions: colour instead of color, for example.

I was never a full-time writer, and my working life was spent in education; as a result, my instinct is always to pass on useful information. In addition to that, I have never forgotten that in 1958, a Professor at Cambridge University remarked to me that, if you ever do any research, you should always publish your results – otherwise your efforts are wasted. I agree. That’s why I’ve taken the trouble to write this book.

3. The need for clear thinking

If you have clicked on Amazon’s Look Inside facility, and read as far as this, you are clearly someone with an ambition to write something. You may well have embarked on, and even completed, several projects already.

Excellent. You have done quite a lot of hard work already. I am now going to ask you to do one very small piece of additional work.

I am really not going to ask you to do anything very difficult. Honest. But I do believe that thirty seconds of thinking, at this stage, and another thirty seconds later on, might possibly prove beneficial.

I suggest that you now write down on a piece of paper an answer to the following question:

When I write a novel (or a short story, or a script), what exactly am I trying to do? What is my main purpose?

And it’s perfectly all right, at this stage, to write down ‘Haven’t a clue.’ Lots of writers go through an entire lifetime without having much clue about they’re really trying to do, and some of them are quite successful.

4. Why is this man talking about emotion anyway?

My own interest in emotion began, I am surprised to remember, when I was still a teenager. No doubt, like most teenagers, I was a seething mass of emotions anyway, but when I think back I believe that my interest in researching this subject was aroused by two things.

First, I was at that time being taught about Aristotle’s theory of tragedy as part of my English ‘A’ level studies; and, second, I was very interested in jazz.

Aristotle, you may recall, had a theory that tragedy in the drama brings about the purification (catharsis) of such emotions as pity and fear. However, I probably did a lot more reading about jazz than about Aristotle. One of the ideas about jazz which was current when I was a teenager was that, since jazz is a musical form which can accommodate almost unlimited improvisation by a solo musician, it is possible for such a musician to express his emotions instantaneously.

At that time (and I was very young, remember) I took the view that the expression of emotions as felt by the ‘artist’ was an important matter. I was, in short, a pompous twit. (‘And you still are,’ I hear a chorus of voices cry.)

Well, when we’re young we all do and believe silly things, and if it’s any help I can say that I now hold the precise opposite of my teenage view. In other words, I now think that it doesn’t matter a damn what the ‘artist’, or writer, or performer, or actor, is feeling when she writes or performs; what matters, above all, is what the audience feels.

But more of that later. For the moment, please note that what I am trying to do in this ebook is explain to you what I believe constitutes a sound and sensible principle on which to base your writing career – seeing as how you seem hell-bent on having one. I am trying to give you an idea of what you should – in my opinion – be trying to do. If you choose to carry out some of the suggestions that I am going to make, you will, in my view, substantially improve your chances of achieving whatever it is you want to achieve through your writing career.

Of course, you are entirely free to ignore what I say. If so, good luck to you. But don’t blame me if you end up wasting several years of your life.

5. Sources of ideas on emotion

I cannot claim that there is much in this chapter which I can describe as original thought. I have relied heavily upon the research and ideas of other writers, scientists, and thinkers.

Given my long-standing interest in emotion, I have made it my business, every ten years or so, to do a brief survey of what science has learnt about emotion in the period since I last researched the subject. As we shall see, this has usually been precious little, because emotions do not readily lend themselves to scientific analysis; as a consequence, few academic researchers have bothered to go down what was obviously a dead end in career terms. Nevertheless, I have occasionally found a useful book on the subject, and I shall refer to these below.

Furthermore, it may be that everything I have to say on this subject strikes you as being perfectly obvious. If so, I can only say that the truths expounded here were once far from obvious to me.

The one virtue which I can perhaps claim is that, so far as I am aware, there have been very few previous attempts to relate the scientific findings about emotion to the craft of writing; and none of them have been recent.

The main previous attempt was that undertaken by an American, Thomas H. Uzzell. In my early twenties I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Uzzell’s book Narrative Technique, which was first published in 1923 and revised in 1934. Uzzell himself was heavily influenced by Professor Walter B. Pitkin of Columbia University, and Pitkin in turn drew on the critical writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

Narrative Technique was at one time quite a well-known work but is now forgotten. However, Uzzell also wrote Writing as a Career (1938) and The Technique of the Novel (1947, revised 1959). And, courtesy of some digital entrepreneur, you can now buy a Kindle reprint of the Technique of the Novel. If you’re a novelist, I advise you to read it.

6. What does the punter want?

The word ‘punter’ is, perhaps, a rather vulgar term, but then I’m a vulgar fellow, and I prefer plain words to fancy ones on the whole. The primary meanings of punter (I have just looked it up) are: one who gambles or places a bet; and a customer or client (often of a prostitute). Earlier dictionary definitions used to include a member of an audience.

For our purposes the word ‘punter’ will serve very well, because it covers both readers of novels and the audiences for dramatic productions. And, since all readers and audience members are gamblers, in the sense that they are laying down money in the hope that the book or play will deliver what they want, the word is doubly appropriate.

So, what does the punter want? When she buys a novel, or a ticket to the opera, what does she hope to get for her money?

What she wants, in my opinion, is a dose of emotion. To be precise, a satisfying emotion.

If you’ve lived as long as I have, you will have noted the massive growth of the entertainment media in parallel with the industrialisation of society and the alienation of the individual members of society. Oh dear, that sentence is, I fear, excessively sesquipedalian. What I am trying to say, in plain English, is that lots of people who live and work in the modern world are thoroughly browned off, and they are desperate for a bit of entertainment. They turn to novels, plays, films, TV programmes, music, and various other media and art forms, in the hope that one or more of these things will help them to feel a little better.

There is nothing new or original about this idea that art is used to overcome alienation. For example, I have on my bookshelf a collection of essays first published in America in 1928 and entitled The Art of Playwriting. One of the contributors to this book had an acquaintance called Jennie, who worked long hours in a beauty parlour. In the 1920s Jennie had this to say:

‘When I go home at night I’m too tired for anything. I can’t sleep, I can’t read, I can’t speak, and I don’t want nobody to speak to me. But for five cents I can go to the movies and sit and rest and see things I never could see any other way – grand people, wild animals, foreign cities, wonderful houses and strange beautiful things. And I forget about myself and go home all made over. And the things I have to stand from him [her husband] don’t seem half so hard.’

Not exactly difficult to understand, is it?

The punter wants to be made to feel emotion. She wants to come out of the cinema, or finish reading a novel, feeling