Good Samaritan Wins Publishing Deal

Here’s a story to bring hope to the hearts of everyone struggling to win a publishing deal.

Ex-soldier and international banker, Mark Powell, had written an action thriller, “Quantum Breach”, and was suffering the long agony that we are all familiar with, having racked up over a 100 rejections.

One evening he was driving home from work in Singapore when he spotted a damsel in distress attempting to heave a spare wheel out of the boot of her car. He stopped to help and once the wheel had been changed they got talking. She asked what he did. He told her he was an author and she told him she was a managing partner in a law firm that acted for the publisher Marshall Cavendish.

A few days later the Good Samaritan found he had a publishing deal for “Quantum Breach” and his second book, “Deep Six” is now close to completion.

The moral of this story? Never give up trying and never pass up a chance to do a stranger a favour.

Heart-warming tale, no?

Should Books Be Shorter?

Why are books so hard to market? Is it possible that the main stumbling block to purchase, (and to consumption), is the sheer amount of time required to read them?

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the average book is 80,000 to 100,000 words long and requires six hours of fairly sustained attention from the customer.

In some situations that will be precisely why the purchase is made, because the customer has ‘time to kill’ on a beach holiday or a long journey, in a sickbed – whatever. Sometimes the pure beauty of the author’s prose and the languor of the storytelling is the reason why that title or that author has been selected. But what if the motive to purchase is that the reader merely wants the information contained in the book and wants it as quickly and painlessly as possible?

Am I the only person who has seen a book that they really want to read in the shops, or read a review, and then simply failed to find the time to read it – or at least failed to get beyond half way? Most people have a colossal number of calls upon their time once they have put in the hours required to earn a living, bring up their family or clip their toe-nails. Given a choice between a quick flick through a newspaper with a cup of tea, an hour in front of the television with their supper, or consuming one sixth of a difficult book, how often does the poor consumer give in to one of the easier options?

So many books could do with severe editing to remove extraneous material, repetitions and all the rest – “kill your darlings” as any creative writing tutor will tell you - but if the final manuscript then comes in at 30,000 words, or less than a hundred pages, it will not look like good value for money, and the publishers will have another marketing hurdle to overcome.

It seems likely that the printed book will never escape from this trap, any more than the average sit-com will escape the traditional half-hour format or many feature films will be allowed to come in at less than ninety minutes. The audiences have historical expectations of the formats which cannot be lightly dismissed.

But if electronic books take off, might we see something altogether different evolving? If people can’t see how ‘thick’ the book is when they buy it, might they be less daunted by the long ones and less likely to dismiss the short ones? Might publishers then be able to stop buying writing by the pound?

Publishing Industry exactly like The X-Factor

The publishing industry is exactly like the X-Factor. You start with tens of thousands of hopefuls, all certain that they are talented and deserve to be made into stars/published. Their friends and family are equally convinced, or at least have to say they are out of loyalty or blind love.

These thousands of people turn up to auditions/send in their manuscripts, and the gatekeepers of television/publishing have a limited amount of time to try to spot the ones that the public will like and want to get to know better. Sometimes it will be obvious that someone has enormous talent, or is exceptionally attractive, usually it is not that obvious.

The majority,through sheer weight of numbers, will then be sent home/have their manuscripts ignored or rejected. Even those who get through to the show/publication, will still be ignored by the public/voted out and will end up disappointed not to have had their dreams come true and angry with those who have succeeded where they have failed.

Someone, of course, has to win - just as with every lottery. On the X-Factor it will be Alexandra Burke and in publishing it will be J.K. Rowling, and then there will be the people who simply gain public attention because they are different and make people smile - John and Edward in the X-Factor, Katie Price in publishing.

It is all quite fair because everyone has the same chance to lay their goods out on display and there are only a limited number of hours that we can all watch television or read books, so most of us will inevitably be knocked back.

There has been a spate of complaints in the media recently from published authors about the state of the publishing industry and how hard it is for new writers to break in and how unfair it is that the bad stuff gets published and the good stuff gets over-looked. But wasn't it always so? Is it possible that millions are transfixed by the X-Factor because it is a giant metaphor for life? Publishing is also exactly like life - everyone who goes into it has ambitions, most will be disappointed.

What to do about it? How do you beat the odds?

Well maybe, like Alexandra Burke, the secret lies in (a) having enough talent to start with (b) working ceaselessly at your craft and (c) coming back for another go every time you are knocked back, (she only won on her second time of appearing on the X-Factor).

Young talent is often knocked back and discouraged, but in the long-run persistence will always pay off - in publishing as in life.

The Puzzle of Creating Best Sellers

Trying to judge which books will catch the public imagination doesn't get any easier, however long you struggle on in the publishing world.
I was pretty certain as I wrote "Cry Myself to Sleep" with Joe Peters that it was a story that people would really want to read, but follow-up books are always hard to pull off. We had had a number one success with "Cry Silent Tears" and it seemed almost too much to hope we could do it again, however much Joe might deserve it.
The second book picks up his story from when he ran away to London at sixteen to live on the streets. It is all about what happens to damaged kids once they grow up and go looking for a place in the world. Joe is an incredibly inspiring character.
Thankfully, my gut feeling has been proved right and the book is already at number three in the charts, battling it out with Jade and Barak and the rest. But then I was equally sure that "For the Love of Julie" which I wrote for Ann Ming, would soar straight to the top of the charts. Everyone who reads this story of a mother fighting for justice for her murdered daughter, (whose body she herself found,months after the killing), tells me that they sobbed almost all the way through it. Ann is another inspiring person who has achieved the most incredible things in getting the 800 year old law of double jeopardy changed, but the book has not soared as fast as Joe's.
I'm confident that word of mouth will result in big sales for Ann eventually, albeit at a slower and steadier rate, but it is a puzzle why the one title has taken off so much faster than the other.
In between these two lies "Disgraced", which I wrote for Saira Ahmed, telling of how she ended up on the game after escaping from her arranged marriage. The book went into the charts, and is selling well around the world, but did not go straight into the top three like Joe.
I guess if we could predict accurately who the big winners were going to be, some of the excitement would have gone.

Blake Publishing Buys Autobiography of Steffi McBride’s Mother.

Blake Publishing has bought the rights to the autobiography of notorious but fictional ex-vice-girl Maggie de Beer.
Maggie, who ran away from home at the age of fifteen in search of fame and fortune, was one of the original ‘Page Three Girls’. The actress and singer became well known for her hard partying, rock and roll lifestyle, and for the many insights into the jet set lifestyle that she provided for the public as the all-time ‘Queen of Kiss-and-Tell’.
More recently she became a household name as the estranged mother of soap star Steffi McBride. The moving tale of their reunion was told last year by Steffi herself in her book, ‘The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride’, (also published by Blake).
Fifteen year-old Maggie became an infamous fixture on the glamorous London social scene soon after she arrived in 1970, emerging as a regular pin-up girl on ‘The Benny Hill Show’ and in the many West End farces and sex shows staged by Soho show business king, Paul Raymond.
In ‘The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer’ Maggie will be talking for the first time about what really went on in the steamy world of international nightclubs and hotels and revealing the secrets within her family that shocked even her.
‘Every teenager dreams of running away from home at some time,’ says ghostwriter, Andrew Crofts, ‘but not many of us have the nerve to actually do it. There are so many traps waiting out there for the innocent and the reckless. Maggie is one of life’s great survivors. She made a pact with the Devil for the chance to follow her dreams and paid the ultimate price. Her extraordinary adventures make for compelling reading; a parable for our media and showbiz-obsessed times.’

A Glimpse of the Future

I spent an interesting day in Oxford this week visiting the James Martin 21st Century School as I set out on the job of researching and writing a biography of James Martin, a man who became the biggest ever single donor to Oxford University a few years ago when he pledged $100m of his own money for the founding of the School. What an incredible achievement the place is.

Born into a poor family in Ashby-de-la-Zouche, James rose to prominence with his writings and teachings about technology and the future of the planet. By founding such a distinguished school he has put his money where his mouth is and is actually doing something about the many problems that face us and the planet we inhabit.

He is basically investing in ideas, something which he has been immensely successful at for many years. The School’s fifteen interdisciplinary institutes and more than a hundred fellows across the collegiate university are studying potential global catastrophes like climate change, bio-engineering, pandemics, mass migration and the possibility of human extinction before the end of the 21st Century. At the same time they are trying to harvest the incredible opportunities arising from new technologies and innovations, as well as social change and improvements in understanding how to deal with systemic risk.

We expend so much of our academic energy studying what has gone before, it is cheering to see such a concerted and intelligent effort being made to understand the future so that we can prepare for it better.

James Martin must be one of the most interesting men currently at work on our planet and this School may well provide some of the answers that will save us from destroying ourselves and maybe even help move us closer to creating a real Utopia.

Winner of Steffi McBride Competition

The winner of the Steffi McBride short story competition is fourteen year-old Nicole Hendry with her piece, “Do You Think It’s Fair?”. It was just as hard a choice as I had thought it would be but there were a number of reasons why I eventually plumped for this one over the very strong competition.
To start with, of course, there is the standard of the writing. Phrases like “the ache was unbearable, like someone tightening the gears in her face with a spanner” and “she heard her mother’s irritated footsteps ascend the stairs” seemed to sing off the page.
The rules of the competition were that it should be about ‘modern celebrity’ and the subjects of anorexia and of fame being forced on people too young to handle it both seem particularly relevant. The fact that they are being written about by someone who is still the same age as the protagonist also strikes me as important, providing a contrast to us older authors who would naturally see things from a different and perhaps more objective perspective.
I must also confess that Nicole’s story rings some personal bells for me as well. Soon after I left school, many years ago, I worked in a modelling agency and school in Bond Street. I may even have worn a ‘pin-striped suit’, certainly many of my older colleagues did. Even then, when I was still young and hungry, and the instant celebrity business was also still in its infancy, I wondered what was going on in the heads of the girls, many of whom were as young as fourteen, who flocked through the doors in search of fame and adoration in much the same way as X-Factor contestants do today.
I can’t wait to see what Nicole comes up with next.