Your First Novel

  • The author wrote his first novel slowly and diligently, but thought it would be easier the second time around and rushed the process.

  • The author had a big success with his first novel and decided not to accept any editing on the second book.

  • The author wrote the first novel in the Eden of the unpublished writer and wrote the second in the Hell of the writer who is still smarting from the one bad review his first novel got.

  • The author got a large amount of money for his first book and felt too much pressure to write a big hit with the second.

  Let's say, however, that the second novel is every bit as good as the first—if not better. Yet sales of the first novel weren't great. Why? Maybe Barnes & Noble promised your publisher a bigger order if the publisher did a larger first printing and threw some marketing money at the novel, so your publisher printed twenty thousand copies instead of ten thousand. And then took returns on thirteen thousand copies, leaving you with a net sale of seven thousand. Seven thousand copies is not such a bad first-novel sale, except that you got a fifty-thousand-dollar advance, which has not been earned back, and the returns far exceeded the industry standard of 40 percent. With that twenty-thousand first printing, your publisher's sales reps were under pressure to get booksellers to take three or four copies, where they would normally have taken one or two.

  Now that your second novel is under consideration, your publisher knows that every bookseller who had a disappointing result with your first novel will be cautious of over-ordering. What's going to happen? It can go either way. If you have a good relationship with your editor and others at the publishing house, and if you have indeed written a novel that's better than your first, your publisher probably will want to continue publishing you in the hope that sales will get a little better with each book. They might not want to "overpay." But if your agent can get them to offer you an advance that's not an out-and-out insult, you should dance with the one what brung ya. They've invested a great deal in your career not only in terms of money, but in terms of the energy it takes to introduce a new writer to readers, with the implicit promise that there will be more good books coming from the new writer's direction soon.

  However, if you've been shrill, demanding, unhappy with everything the publisher did or attempted to do for your book—or did not do when you thought it should have—and if your sales are disappointing, and if your new book is not appreciably better than your first, you should prepare yourself to be dumped. Ironically, of course, if you've behaved this way, you're not likely to see what you did wrong—you're too busy parceling out blame.

  "HE'S A PRODUCER"

  I gave several novels by one of my clients to a former boss of mine, a longtime publisher who was himself the son of two famous publishers. When he saw that the novels had come out about a year apart, he wrote me: "He'll be a success: He's a producer." I hadn't ever heard anyone put the success of a writer down to such a quality before. But his point was blindingly obvious. Given the unlikelihood that you'll become a famous best-selling novelist with the publication of your first book, you're going to have to work to get there, if that's where you want to get. You're going to have to work to make any kind of a career out of writing. Getting one book published may be the realization of a lifelong dream, but it doesn't usually pay the mortgage.

  If, in the long process of writing a book, making it better, finding an agent, and getting published, you learned to regard what you were doing as a full-time job—as often as not a second full-time job—you are well on your way to building a career for yourself. Look around you. How many truly successful people do you know who achieved success by putting a year into this and a year into that? That's why the route to success is often likened to a ladder. Even if the masses don't take you seriously as a writer, you've got to take yourself seriously as a writer if you're going to take the next step on that ladder.

  If you're having a hard time moving on, think of a world without books. Think of what it would be like if you weren't compelled to write, if no one was able to write, if your own life hadn't been enriched by book after book, many of them brilliant but not many of them perfect. In The Giver, by Lois Lowry, we gradually come to realize that the people of the Community have no color, no music, no memories, and no books. Any of these things raise emotions in the heart, and—"back and back and back"—emotions had been found to be dangerous, as anything uncontrollable can be threatening. It goes without saying that the Community had no writers.

  Every writer is the fulcrum for hope. A good story well told is the expression of hope for order in a chaotic world. It's the expression of hope that people will communicate with one another, will open their hearts to one another. It's the expression of hope that a human being can leave something lasting that might touch the generation that comes after. Writers—and their writing—can be dark or light, cynical or idealistic, misanthropic or loving. It is their prerogative—their mandate—to express the full range of human emotion. Without writers, I suspect all the color would gradually drain from the world, leaving us in grayness.

  IN THEIR OWN WORDS: KATHRYN HARRISON

  Kathryn Harrison, the author of half a dozen novels, including Envy, The Seal Wife, and Poison, as well as the best-selling memoir The Kiss, still doesn't find publication easy.

  Publication is hard. With the first book you have no perspective on the industry. Your book has been a huge part of your life, it's loomed large on your horizon, yet fifty thousand books a year are published and only a small percentage will get attention, so it's likely the debut of your book will be a non-event for the rest of the world. It's the final death-throe of something that was alive—it was alive as long as it was manipulable, changeable, reworkable—but it's dead to you now and any attention it gets is like an autopsy.

  I love the private act of writing. My favorite time is before anyone's read it; after that, the editing and publishing are a gradual process of letting go of something dying, like shedding a skin. The only way to insulate myself from that death is to fall in love with a new project. If you're working on something new you'll be less likely to be impressed with the good reviews the book gets or devastated by the bad ones.

  FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN

  The second time around might not be easier, but if, like Kathryn Harrison, you've fallen in love with a new idea for your next book, it might easier. After coping with the business end of publishing for months, you'll probably be so happy to be back in your writing room that it won't feel like work. You'll take pleasure in the fact that your craft has gotten better, without losing sight of the fact that the ability to write and write well can be continually improved across a lifetime. Whether the second novel is easier or not, you're still going to have to do all or most of the things you did to make the first one better: Share it with your writing group, read it out loud, put it away, print it out, read it through, mark it up, tear it apart, and rewrite it several times.

  This time around, though, you might be able to show your early drafts to your agent or your editor, depending on how those relationships have shaped up. You might have the kind of agent who will work with you editorially. While many agents do this nowadays, not all of them do—not all of them are willing, and it isn't really a requirement of the position. Even if you have an agent who is willing to give feedback to work in progress, don't send him a draft riddled with gaping plot holes and underdeveloped characters and ask him to tell you how to fix it.

  Remember that your agent's job is to hold on to your belief in your work so he can get you the most favorable possible contracts and relationships with publishers. Those good contracts and relationships are meant to encourage the publisher to think of new and creative ways to "grow" you as a published writer. So if you rush a manuscript over to your agent with the request that he read it and help you fix it, you're only putting a possible damper on the agent's enthusiasm for your work. He has other clients, so you might try to imagine what his week would be like if he had a stack of r
ough drafts on his desk, all from writers wanting him to spend the time it would take to go through several versions of each until the writer got it right. He wouldn't have much time left over to make the telephone calls and hold the meetings that are used to further your career.

  You've formed a business partnership, and a good business partner doesn't ask the other to carry the entire burden of the project. So go back to your writing group. Go back to the process that you learned in this book to take your manuscript from good to great. Hold the readings. Join the workshops. Put the novel away for six weeks. Print it out and read it through. Only after you've done all those things should you show it to your agent. But just think: You won't have to try to find an agent for this one. You already have one. And you've got a new career: You're a published writer.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  How to Get Happily Published, by Judith Applebaum. Applebaum runs a book marketing company called Sensible Solutions, Inc. that is based on the principles she outlines in this book. Especially valuable—here and at the book's Web site, www.happilypublished.com—are her tips on how to boost your book's sales.

  "Performance Anxiety," a 2002 Village Voice article by Joy Press (www.villa-gevoice.com/specials/vls/178/press.shtml). Press identifies "second-novel syndrome" and interviews several well-known authors about its effects.

  A Life in Letters: F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited and annotated by Matthew J. Bruccoli. In this volume, intended as "the standard one-volume edition of Fitzgerald's letters," Fitzgerald discusses his second and third novels, The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby, and in so doing maps his growth as a published writer.

  Publicize Your Book! by Jacqueline Deval. From a former director of publicity for several major publishing houses, this book tells you what really goes on in the publicity department and how you can work with whatever publicity you get, as well as how to develop your own. Excellent for first-time authors.

  RECOMMENDED WEB SITES

  American Booksellers Association (http://www.bookweb.org/). The online home of the organization that sponsors both BookExpo America and Book Sense.

  Here you'll find links to all of its regional booksellers' organizations and calendars of conventions and other events. Once you locate the region most relevant to you and your book, click through to that division's site and you'll find application forms for attending the annual conventions.

  Google Books Partner Program (http://books.google.com/googlebooks/ author.html). This link takes you to Google's author resources page, which tells you about the Books Partner Program and other programs of interest to published authors.

  Writing-World.com (www.writing-world.com/promotion/james.shtml).

  Check out the article titled "40+ Ways to Make Your Next Book Signing an EVENT!" by Larry James. It can't hurt and it might help.

  21st Century Publishing (http://julieduffy.com/writing/promote_online. htm). Julie Duffy's site, directed at print-on-demand authors, offers helpful promotional tips in an article titled "Promoting Your Book in Online Groups."

  The Lipstick Chronicles (http://thelipstickchronicles.typepad.com/). The

  blog of four women mystery writers—Harley Jane Kozak, Nancy Martin, Susan McBride, and Sarah Strohmeyer—gives a good glimpse into the lives and creative processes of some up-and-coming writers.

  EPILOGUE

  We hope that this book has demystified the writing and publishing process and given you the kind of information that will help you find your way to successful publication. It's important to know that you're not alone, that other writers, famous or not, have the same ups and downs, worries and doubts and exhilarations, as you do. We hope you feel inspired not only to write, but to write well and to write better. Our wish is that you've gained the confidence in your work that will enable you to approach publishers and agents without fear or self-consciousness.

  Getting published is a daunting proposition, and its complexities could fill several books. If you write because you can't wo/write, as Dennis Lehane said in the foreword, giving up just won't be an option. If you stick with it, you'll be able to make a career of writing. One book proves you're a writer, but a string of books—that's what makes you an author.

  —Ann Rittenberg and Laura Whitcomb