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Good morning, everyone!

Today I am very excited to introduce you to Hannah Schofield, an agent with LBA Books.

Hannah began her journey into the publishing industry interning for Molly Ker Hawn at The Bent Agency and was immediately hooked by the world of agenting. She also worked as an editorial intern, rights assistant, and worked for a literary scout before joining LBA in 2018 as an agency assistant. She has since been promoted to agent and is working on her own list of commercial and reading group fiction.

Hannah has had much recent success within the industry, as she recently completed her first auction in Germany for one of her debut authors, sold one of her lockdown signed books to a publisher, and has two books coming out in 2021; Amy Lavelle's Definitely Fine (Orion) in August, and Marina McCarron's The Time Between Us (Aria) in November.

Hannah is also one of many agents who are offering one-to-one sessions. This is our bespoke service offering both valuable and personal feedback on your work from leading literary agencies in the UK and the US.

Check out some highlights from our interview with Hannah below.

"I love to be introduced to a strong voice and compelling character, and to get quickly into the heart of the story, especially if there's something exciting that kicks off the narrative and will make me want to read on!"

Good morning Hannah, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. We would love to know more about what you're looking for in submissions, your favourite books, and what brought you to agenting.

Q. What brought you to agenting?

My very first job in publishing was interning for Molly Ker Hawn at the Bent Agency, and I was immediately hooked by the world of agenting, reading, editing, and talking about books all the time?! Sign me up! I also thought that the creative and sales sides of agenting each strongly matched my skillset.

After my internship, I did a couple of other roles in publishing, editorial intern, rights assistant, and working for a literary scout, before landing at LBA in 2018 as the agency assistant. I started working with my own clients the following year as junior agent, and I was promoted to agent this summer! I'm very privileged to have had a pretty easy route into publishing, and I'm delighted to be working in the field that twenty-two-year-old me dreamed of!

Q. What's at the top of your fiction wish-list? What authors do you love? What kind of books?

I am currently building my list of commercial and book-club fiction, I wouldn't be the right agent for anything that was too linguistically experimental, but many of my favourite books do sit in the literary-commercial crossover spot, like Transcendent Kingdom or Expectation. I'm interested in women's fiction of all stamps, be it laugh-out-loud voice-driven narratives, or more serious, books about issues and experiences different women face, including outside of the American/Eurocentric bubble, for example, I adored If I Had Your Face.

I also unashamedly love heartland commercial fiction, from brilliantly twisty thrillers (I've recently been on a Megan Miranda kick, I think she's fabulous), to sumptuous historical fiction, to romcoms that play on established tropes (enemies to lovers! Friends to lovers! There's only one bed!) but feel fresh. Recent favourites in these areas have included The Appeal, The Rose Code, The Ex Talk, The Mismatch, and One by One.

At the moment, I'd love to find a page-turning thriller, especially one set in a remote or insular community. I loved Black Widows and We Begin at the End. With any book that I love, the characters are key. I need to be completely in love with them (or‚ vaguely frightened but compelled)!

Q. What do you love when it comes to non-fiction? What topics fire you up? Which genres leave you cold?

I tend to enjoy narrative non-fiction mostly, whether that be a memoir with a unique story to tell (think: Unfollow or Educated), or non-murdery true crime, such as My Friend Anna or Bad Blood. I'd also love to find something about the history of art or classical music, particularly if it was not from the perspective of a white, male gaze. With any non-fiction project, I'd be happy to read something that was either serious or light-hearted in tone, and much like in fiction, I am drawn to women's stories across all genres. I wouldn't be the right person for projects about spirituality, military history, or books about space or Big Tech.

Q. What's been your favourite recent beach read? Your favourite recent heavyweight novel? A recent non-fiction book that you've been talking about with friends?

Beach read: The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda. This has everything I want from a thriller: great pace, compelling protagonist, new information coming to light that changes everything, and a satisfying ending. A winner.

Heavyweight: The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dar. My heart was broken time and time again throughout this novel, but Adunni's voice was so compelling. I couldn't put this down, I was consumed with the hope that it would get better for her. A heavy read for sure, but a truly beautiful one. [Content warning: this novel contains several scenes of child abuse.]

Non-fiction: Know My Name by Chanel Miller. This is probably the most powerful book I have ever read, and such an extraordinary act of courage. I would want every high-schooler to read this book, it's just absolutely incredible.

View the full interview on Hannah's AgentMatch profile.

If you're interested in booking a one-to-one session with Hannah, then click here.

In the meantime, if you're struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you're a Premium Member with us, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review!

When you’re writing fiction, developing your characters is a crucial point in the writing process. You might have the most compelling plot in the world, full of romance and action and intrigue – but if your characters feel more like paper dolls than people, chances are your book isn’t ready yet. It’s important to be able to tell the difference between round and flat characters, and to know when it’s okay to let a character stay two-dimensional or when they really need that extra axis of development. So let’s dig in!

Characters In Fiction

Let’s define something out of the gate: what do we mean when we talk about ‘character development?’

Basically, character development is the process by which a character (particularly in fiction) is brought ‘to life’ by giving them motivations, personalities, wants and desires – making them feel vivid and real, essentially. It can also refer to the ways your characters may change over the course of the novel, their literal development on the page thanks to the plot.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll be talking about two – well, three, but we’ll get to that – kinds of characters: flat ones and round ones.

What Is A Round Character And How Do I Write One?

A ‘round’ character has layers. They’re nuanced and vivid, the kinds of characters you read about and wish they were your friends or to whom you feel an emotional connection. Essentially, the round characters are the story. These characters are your complex protagonists and antagonists, and your key supporting roles. They serve as the plot drivers because they make the decisions on where the story goes.

A fully-formed, well fleshed out character doesn't happen overnight. Much like meeting someone at a party, it takes time to get to know them. They all start two-dimensional and then you add layers to them – it's like growing little onion-people! (Sorry for that strange insight into my brain.)

A reader wants to care about your rounded characters, will want to be surprised by them, and will want to follow them on their journeys. The more we explain why someone is the way they are or acts the way they do, the more complex they become, and that's the beauty of a rounded character. A good tip is to spend time getting to know the characters that you need to be rounded, and this can be super beneficial before you start writing because that knowledge can influence and better shape your writing.

Here are some tips on how to create them:

Outline Their Goals And Motivations

A reader cares more when they understand our characters, and the key here is to ensure our reader knows what motivations are driving our character's decisions throughout the story. These motivations can be based on good reasons or bad, and will apply to both the protagonist and the antagonist. It seems that the appetite for understanding motivations has increased in storytelling, and so it’s worth looking at two beloved characters who’ve recently had their motivations brought to the big screen:

JAMES BOND
Over decades, we’ve seen a host of Bond films where he’s more or less the same character: a charmer and a killer. This had a certain appeal, to be sure, but it also made him rather two-dimensional. When producers decided to adapt the 1953 novel Casino Royale in 2006, we were suddenly shown insight into how Bond became a killer (that brilliant black-and-white opening sequence) and what motivated his callous charm (falling in love, discovering her deception, watching her drown). Now we understood why he behaved the way that he did, which made him far more human than he’d been before.

THE JOKER
Part of the Joker’s appeal in every Batman appearance prior to Todd Phillips’ 2019 film Joker was that he was a madman. He represented anarchy to Batman’s order – very archetypal, comic book stuff. But Joaquin Phoenix’s award-winning performance revealed a failed clown whose inner turmoil gave rise to the chaotic villain we’ve all come to know.

Bring Conflict Into Your Character's Life

Conflict is not only a tool to drive the plot forward, but also shows a reader how your character will respond to a given circumstance. That in turn is interesting to a reader because it will show up traits in a character like their moral standing, etc. We can use another character to demonstrate conflict, or use an internal conflict, or even both. Take Woody from Toy Story as an example of both. He was Andy's most cherished toy until Buzz Lightyear came and took pride of place on Andy's bed (and heart). Note that introducing Buzz into the story – who posed no threat to Woody physically because they didn't have any historical conflict – had a knock-on effect to the internal conflict within Woody. Woody's insecurities and fear of being replaced meant his 'good guy' persona was rattled.

Let Your Character Evolve

A rounded character will learn something throughout the story, and they’ll be different by the end than they were at the start. Using Woody in Toy Story as an example again, his acceptance of Buzz by the end of the film – and his willingness to understand what it means to share Andy’s attention -- leaves him in a far different place from where he was at the beginning of the movie. You are a different person from who you were when you started your journey; shouldn’t your characters be, too?

What Is A Flat Character?

A flat character is two-dimensional and uncomplicated. They are often minor characters (though not always) and their role in the story is usually a perfunctory one. It’s rare for a flat character to undergo any kind of development over the course of the story – usually because their development isn’t the point of the story. But that’s not to say that flat characters are a bad thing, or even something to avoid!

They can be used for enhancing rounded characters and interaction between the two can reinforce the rounded character's strengths, traits and values. Think about The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz: she's simply evil and not given any backstory, but she makes Dorothy look like a saint with awesome morals via the ways in which she provokes conflict. Your flat characters might also be supporting roles like Miss Stephanie Crawford, the town gossip in To Kill a Mockingbird: someone who can help deliver the novel’s message and who can help spur the revelations of the rounded characters, but whose story doesn’t need to be filled out for the reader’s enjoyment.

Let’s get into some tips on writing your flat characters:

Flat Characters Get Flat Names

I tend to give my flat characters forgettable, common names, or even no name at all – sometimes a job reference will even do, eg. 'the waiter' if they're just in one scene and delivering a cup of tea.

Flat Doesn’t Mean Boring

Your flat characters can have quirks that will delight a reader but won’t distract them. For example, you can have a clown who's not funny, or a dentist with bad teeth. Tom Bombadil is one of Tolkien’s most memorable inventions, but he serves a purpose in The Hobbit, not a distraction – or think about Dame Judi Dench’s performance in Shakespeare in Love, which won her an Oscar and she was on-screen for eight minutes!

Enjoy Them But Don't Spend Lots Of Energy On Them

If you feel confused about whether a flat character needs more to them, the likelihood is that the reader will also feel confused about their role. Don’t let that compelling quirky weirdo who shows up in one scene take over the rest of your book (unless, you know, you want them to) – again, you don’t want your flat characters to be a distraction. That’s why they’re flat! Determine their relevance to the scene and then focus on that before getting on with your day.

The Difference Between Flat And Round Characters

If you're not sure if you need a round or flat character in any given scene, ask yourself a simple question – do I need the reader to care about them here, or in the story as a whole? If the answer is yes, you need to give them some complexity. If not, they're the flat ones.

Consider a classic battle scene in The Return of the King: The Ride of the Rohirrim, a last ditch attempt against all odds to save Middle Earth (no pressure). The sequence has both flat and rounded characters within it. We care about the collective force because they are representing the microcosm of the entire trilogy – good vs evil – in a spectacular and emotive way, but do we care about each and every one of the six thousand riders? Nope. We care about Theoden, Eowyn, and Merry – because those are the characters that have been given layers. We’ve spent time with them, seen their lives upended, witnessed their doubts and insecurities, seen their moral and emotional growth, and have agonised alongside them.

And while we’re talking about speculative fiction, let’s use a role-playing game example: your well-rounded characters are, well, the characters you’re playing – while your flat characters are your NPCs, your non-player-characters. They’re the ones your main characters interact with along the way.

What Is A Static Character?

A note: some main characters, including some quite famous ones, are decidedly static characters – by which we mean that they don’t change, even as they’re quite memorable and even by many respects ‘well-rounded’ characters. Remember what we were saying about the Joker earlier? Remove that 2019 film from your brain and think about the character again: we often don’t know his name, his motivations are unclear, and he serves mostly as a foil to our protagonist. Another, more literary, example would be Bertie Wooster (and Jeeves, for that matter!) from P. G. Woodhouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories. The relationship between Bertie and Jeeves will always be the same, those two men themselves will always be the same, and that’s really part of the joy of reading those stories: that those characters do not change.

Without Character You Have No Story

Your characters are the beating heart of your novel or story, and it’s crucial to make sure that you’ve invested them with the time and attention they deserve. Some of them might be well-rounded characters and some of them might be flat – but hopefully these tips and tricks will help you determine which should be which!

Planets are boring; they only have two poles. Books are interesting, because they have at least five or six poles, which define the shape of the whole.

Here they are:

External jeopardy

In a huge number of books, the possibility that a big bad thing happens animates the entire reading experience. If you’re reading a thriller, or anything in that zone, the external jeopardy (eg: will the baddies blow up the White House?) is likely to be the single dominating component of your overall structure. The question provoked in the reader is, roughly, what happens next? That’s the basic question underpinning all suspense novels.

Mystery

In pretty much all crime novels, but in plenty of other books too, there’s also a big element of mystery. Here, the question isn’t what happens next, but what did happen? Who killed Colonel Higgins in the library? Why where there no footprints in the flowerbed? Why was the butler seen with an unwaxed moustache and an unbuttoned waistcoat? Why did the library smell of burned almonds and gently warmed honey?

Mystery is not as powerful a driver of story as suspense, but it’s still reasonably powerful (ask Agatha Christie) and it’s particularly successful when combined with plenty of suspense.

Emotion

Most books involve a bit of love interest, or some other powerful emotional centre – a missing child, a dying parent.

Plenty of novels have that emotional interest as their object of overwhelming concern. So, yes, most romances will have some notes of external jeopardy: for example, in Pride & Prejudice, there’s the question of whether Wickham will debauch the silly Lydia and ruin the family. But these things are deeply secondary to the big emotional question of whether he/she is going to get it together with him/her.

These emotional questions are one of suspense – that is, they look forward, not back – but they’re worth separating out from the issue of external jeopardy, simply because most novels (including all of mine) have issues of external jeopardy playing alongside more traditional romance. They feel like, and are, different elements.

Morality

Pretty much all novels (and again, all of mine) also run up against significant moral questions. Those moral questions are typically entangled with other aspects of story. So, in romances, the Mister typically needs to prove his moral worth (eg: ride to Lydia’s rescue) in order to give the romance its final delicious bite. Or in crime novels, the detective/investigator is typically confronted with taxing moral challenges en route to solving the crime.

Beauty

At the more literary end of the spectrum, there’s another element to take into account: how beautiful is the writing? How deliciously quotable are the sentences? This is book as objet d’art: something you almost want to hang on the wall and coo at.

Humour

Last and probably least, there’s humour. A bark of laughter is so different from everything else we’ve considered, that it’s worth teasing out into its own category. A romance or a thriller or a ghost story or a literary novel could be glumly serious from start to finish, or it could make you gurgle with laughter. You can have romantic comedies, and romantic tragedies, and romantic adventures, and they’ll all have a different feel. Same thing with any other genre. Some books make you laugh, others don’t. There’s another pole right there.

**

Now I mention all this partly because it’s of interest in itself to lay these pieces out on the counter for inspection.

But I was also inspired to write this email by watching my kids cook. They are still of an age where they think that more of any ingredient must be better. We made lemon and ginger tea this morning, for example. Lemon is good, so they added plenty of that. And honey, so plenty of that. Ditto ginger. And obviously mint is good, so handfuls of that were added. There was no sense of proportion, balancing this ingredient against that one, so the result was a very full saucepan and a brew so thick it needed loads of dilution before it was actually palatable. If I’d let them add salt and mayonnaise and pineapple chunks, they’d probably have added them too. After all, who doesn’t love mayonnaise?

Now I’ll admit: my approach to writing is broadly the same. Humour’s good: I want plenty of that. Romance: yep, bring it on. Mystery? I write detective novels, so I need plenty of that. But my books need to thrill, so I want a very high jeopardy climax. And I want my writing to shine stylistically, so I work at that too. And inevitably, given the kind of stories I write and the character I write about, moral issues creep in there too, and I do what I can to make real space for those too.

It’s probably true that my books are above all suspense novels: if they weren’t exciting, nobody would read them. It’s the proper delivery of that element which allows me to get away with everything else.

And that basic model does work. In fact, it’s probably the primary way to write a book. Choose your lead element (suspense in my case, with a heavy dash of mystery) then see how much you can ratchet the other things up.

But it’s not the only model. If you write a really funny book, for example, the laughter is likely to drown any more subtle shades. Likewise, you can certainly slot a romance into a thriller with some end-of-the-world type hook, but the romance is almost certainly (and ought certainly) to be secondary. 

More interestingly, there’s quite a lot of high-end and critically lauded literary work where the beautiful writing tends to shove aside everything else. I’ve just finished reading a book, Lanny by Max Porter, where the writing is unquestionably stunning. It’s original, poetic, versatile, funny, surprising – everything you think you might want from a literary novel.

But the book told a story about a boy vanishing from his home, and possibly abducted. The denouement reveals the true story and delivers (small spoiler) a happy ending. But honestly? The writing overwhelmed the story and the characters too. The boy himself never quite felt real. The parents’ own feelings creaked under the weight of lovely writing laid on top of them.

To my mind, those failures spell disaster. If you tell a story about an abducted child and you don’t feel much resonance with either the child or the parents, then something’s gone wrong. (That is, I accept, a personal view: plenty of people love those books, or say they do, or give literary prizes to them. But how many of those people actually read every word of those books, I wonder?)

The question I have for you is where does your story score on each of its dimensions? Are you a shove everything in kind of writer? Or do you have one very clear lead element with the others left trailing in the background.

I suspect that most of us should take one of two approaches:

1. Choose a lead element and make it exceptional. If it’s about beautiful writing, then be really beautiful. If you’re writing a thriller, then make it utterly thrilling. If your book isn’t going to be rounded
2. Choose a lead element or two, and see how much of the other elements you can bring in without breaking things. The trick here is keeping the coherence of your lead elements intact, while bringing other things into play. It’s good if your book is funny – but you can’t let too much laughter kill your high-jeopardy denouement, or take away the sweetness of that finally fulfilled romance.

And one of the purposes of this email is to nudge you if there’s anything you’ve forgotten.

There’s some Woody Allen film where he’s getting ready for a big night out. We see him checking his jacket, adjusting his hair, building his confidence. Then he’s ready – he leaves the room – the camera stays running – and we see him rush back in: he’s forgotten to wear trousers.

This email is asking you to check that you are wearing trousers. Have you just forgotten to tease out the morally difficult areas of your story? Is there a mystery you are neglecting? Is your handling of that secondary romance just lacking?

Because, as writers, we concentrate so hard on getting our lead elements arranged correctly, we can som1etimes forget to think about all those other things. So think about them, right?

Add mayonnaise.

And pineapple.

We all know that a book with a great hook is something agents, editors, and readers are looking for. But when it comes to books that last, the ones that readers will be recommending for years to come, it’s those with the best plot twists that stand the test of time.

Yet plot twists are so hard to write. So how do you deliver thrilling twists and turns that will keep your readers guessing until the very end?

What Is A Plot Twist?

“I feel that the characters in my book, if they were real, would be like, "Seriously, another plot twist?”
(Author, Meghan Blistinsky)

A plot twist is a literary device found in all forms of storytelling, where the reader (or viewer) is lured into the intrigue of the plot and left reeling by a grand revelation or turn of events they didn’t see coming.

A plot twist can take place in any scenario, but there are three very important rules a writer must follow:

1. It must be plausible
The reader needs to be surprised by the revelation, but not shocked. All readers love to guess what will happen next, but if the plot twist doesn’t make sense or hasn’t been primed in advance the readers will feel tricked or let down.

2. It must be a surprise
It’s not much of a twist if the reader is able to guess the outcome from the very beginning. A successful plot twist, whether in a book or movie, will keep people guessing all the way through.

3. It must be foreshadowed
We all love to think we can outsmart the writer and guess what will happen. But a great writer will make you think you’ve cracked it, and still surprise you with a revelation that makes total sense, but only in retrospect.

Why Is It Important To Have Plot Twists In Your Book?

It’s not. Plot twists aren’t vital in every book, but they are a great way to add intrigue, keep readers turning the pages, and get them invested in the plot. Not to mention add much-needed hype to your book.

And it doesn’t matter what genre you write in. A great plot twist transcends all types of books and stories. We often think of thriller plot twists when considering books with a grand reveal – you can’t have a successful murder mystery without a shocking revelation at the end - but every book can benefit from adding a plot twist (or two, or three, or four) to add tension, intrigue, and keep readers talking.
A good plot twist can be used effectively in all genres, from fantasy and YA to rom coms and gothic horror. Even if no one has gone missing or been killed.

Plot Twist Examples From Books And Movies

“The best stories are the ones with the unexpected plot twists that no one would have guessed, even the writer.”
(Author, Shannon L. Alder)

There are too many amazing movie plot twist examples and great plot twists in books to list them all, so we’ve split them up into three types. Plus, we’ve kept the descriptions vague so as not to ruin their big ‘wow’ moments if you are unfamiliar with them.

Watching a movie, or reading a book, a second time can be extra enjoyable because that’s when we see how the writer planted the clues to the twists throughout the story from the beginning. See if you can think of your favourite plot twists and where they would fit in to these three categories.

Plot Twist #1: The Grand Reveal

This is generally known as the ‘who dunnit?’ and is used in all crime, thriller, and murder mystery books and movies.

Behind her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
A single mother falls in love with her boss and befriends his wife, but something is very wrong.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
A reporter confronts the psychological demons from her past when she returns to her hometown to cover a violent murder.

Knives Out
Who killed crime novelist Harlan Thrombey? A murder mystery with more twists than Chubby Checker.

The Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Just after midnight the Orient Express stops in its tracks. In the morning, an American is found stabbed to death. Who did it?

Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King
People are being murdered. But who is the bad guy when you’re a writer living alone?

Plot Twist # 2: The Plot Thickens

These types of plot twists are often used to change the direction of the story. Sometimes the twist is the inciting incident, sometimes the midway reveal, or it can pull the protagonist in a new direction and lurching into act 3. When it comes to a series, these types of revelations can also serve as great cliff hangers.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Dozens of boys, and one girl, must escape a maze for freedom. Yet who is behind their imprisonment?

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
A novel set in Victorian England follows the intertwining lives of two women from different worlds.

Parasite
A poor family scheme to become employed by a wealthy family and infiltrate their household by lying about who they are.

The Girl With All the Gifts by Mike Carey
A teacher and a scientist living in a dystopian future embark on a journey of survival with an unusual young girl.

I am Legend by Richard Matheson
A post-apocalyptic vampire thriller, about a lone survivor struggling to live in a world that is no longer his own.

Plot Twist #3: Wait! What?

Some of the best plot twists are those that you never asked for and come out of nowhere. By adding a huge twist at the end, one that (unlike a murder mystery) you were not waiting for, it changes the entire story from what you were led to believe to something else. Unlike a simple ‘who dunnit?’, these twists throw the biggest curve balls and leave you reeling as the credits roll or you close the book for the last time.

Sixth Sense
A little boy can see ghosts and is helped by a psychologist…who may not be all he seems.

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
A teen girl has an illness which means she can’t leave her bedroom. Then she falls in love.

Seven
Someone is killing people based on the seven deadly sins. But what’s in that box at the end?

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
We know he’s a cold-blooded killer. Or is he?

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
A lonely teen girl recounts one beautiful summer, that may not have been so beautiful after all.

How To Write Your Own Plot Twists

“Beneath every story, there is another story. There is a hand within the hand...... There is a blow behind the blow.”
(Author, Naomi Alderman)

You only have to read the latest Amazon reviews of a newly-hyped thriller to see how important plot twists are to readers. Many books are sold as having a ‘twist you never saw coming’ – which can backfire if readers are able to guess the grand reveal too early, leaving them feeling cheated. In other words, readers want you to surprise them with twists that they never saw coming yet were obvious in retrospect.

This is easier said than done. So how can you, as a writer, achieve that?

Here are five plot twist writing tips to keep your readers intrigued and guessing until the very end:

1. Let Your Characters Do The Hard Work

If you have created well-rounded characters with clear intentions and strong personalities, they will often reveal to you something you never initially planned.

Relax and leave your main characters to do the walking and talking. Perhaps put them in a strange scenario and see what happens. You may be surprised by where they take you.

2. Work Backwards

When it comes to the best thriller plot twists, authors often work backwards. They start with the big reveal, then go back and insert subtle clues and pointers alongside dead ends and red herrings. It’s important the clues are hidden amongst the more obvious clues that are placed on purpose to misdirect the reader.

For example: If you want the killer at the end of your novel to be the cleaner, you may have her polishing the gun in act one, and you may have her cleaning in a scene where another suspect is acting more obviously guilty. The best places to add plausible clues that lead to your twist is to hide them among action or dramatic narrative where the readers won’t be noticing them as much.

Let your readers think they’ve cracked it, then lead them down a dead end and make them circle back.

3. Mislead Your Readers On Purpose

This leads us on to misdirection, red herrings, and dead ends. The only way to keep your readers guessing is to play with them. Like any good magician, you make them look at your right hand while hiding the coin with your left.

This doesn’t mean simply pointing at the wrong culprit until the big reveal at the end, but entertaining your readers with plenty of action and intrigue until they are yanked out of their comfort zone with a big twist.

For example, in Life of Pi by Yann Martel, we are so intrigued by the concept of a man having to survive on a life raft with a killer tiger, that it doesn’t occur to us that the story may be an allegory. And in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, we are so enthralled by the depiction of a seedy club full of men fighting one another, that we never once consider that perhaps our narrator is far from reliable.

4. Give Them A Mega Twist At The End Of The First Twist

There are no rules when it comes to how many plot twists you can have in one book (as long as you don’t make your readers dizzy with them). One fun device is to build up to an expected twist, then deliver a mega-deadly twist straight after.

One example of three twists in a row is in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. In the original novel, not only does Dorothy discover that the Great Oz is merely an inept man behind a curtain, but she learns that she could have gotten home simply by clicking her heels. And then, as if that’s not enough drama, once she’s back in Kansas we discover it was a dream all along. Or was it?

These twists after twists are a fun way to add tension and speed up the pace during the last act, and to keep readers thinking of the story long after they close the book.

5. Play With Your Readers’ Emotions

Authors love to make you feel – whether that means making you laugh, cry, shocked, or even so angry you throw the book against the wall (then quickly pick it back up, because you simply have to know what happens next).

The best way to play with a reader’s emotions is to deliver a roller coaster of gut-wrenching twists. In Romeo and Juliet, we go from the throes of passion and teen love to Romeo’s best friend Mercutio being killed by Juliet’s cousin. A big dilemma we never saw coming. From love to despair, Romeo then delivers another twist when he kills Tybalt in revenge. We go from a cute YA love story to one of violence, tragedy, and drama when Romeo is banished.

If Romeo and Juliet were a teen novel today, most readers would expect that arc to lift by the end of the book, proving that love can overcome everything. Yet this is no love story, it’s a tragedy that purposely messes with your emotions. As a final, fatal, twist we see Romeo not only kill himself in the last act because he thinks Juliet is dead – but Juliet wakes up, sees that her lover is dead, and kills herself too!

This onslaught of dramatic twists leaves the spectators reeling with every imaginable emotion until at the end of the play they are left completely bereft. But in the very best way. Because, ultimately, a reader wants a writer to make them feel.

A Plot Twist With A Difference

As a final plot twist of our own, we’re adding a little bit more to this article and supplying you with some inspiration for your own memorable plot twist creations. Now we’ve had a look at what plot twists are, which ones work best, and how to write your own, here are some fun prompts to get you messing with your readers’ minds.

What if…

- The bad guy isn’t the bad guy after all? The MC is?

- The MC falls in love with the friend helping them get the girl?

- The imaginary world is the real world?

- The MC isn’t the narrator? It’s all been from someone else’s POV?

- The good guys were never there to help after all?

- The MC isn’t alone, as we have been led to believe?

- The narrator is unreliable?

- The MC has been lied to all along?

- They were pretending to be someone else?

- They are not dead?

- Or…are not alive?

Plot twists, when executed well, are not only fun to experience as a reader, but are also a lot of fun to write. There’s no greater thrill than a reader exclaiming they never saw your twist coming. Next time you are reading a great book, or watching a movie, study where the writer or director is asking you to look and look in the opposite direction. Study the clues, guess the outcome, and try to get one over on the writer. You may even be inspired to write your own unforgettable plot twist.

Here’s a thought:

You will, consciously or unconsciously, have a philosophy of writing, a set of assumptions or beliefs that underpins everything you do. But what is that philosophy? And is it helping you? Or (more probably) does it partly help you and partly block you?

I had that thought because I’ve definitely had a philosophy that has partly helped and partly hindered. My first novel (The Money Makers) was a playful, enjoyable, highly commercial romp. I started the book while still working full time in the finance industry and, before I’d been in finance, I’d studied economics and philosophy at Oxford.

I came to writing fiction deeply aware that all my recent training – Oxford and finance – was deeply unhelpful when it came to writing popular fiction. I needed to chuck out the long sentences, the jargon, the fancy words. I needed to bring in tight, clear, physical, compelling writing.

So I developed the habit of checking my prose for readability – literally checking my readability score for each chapter. The metric I used was the Flesch-Kincaid score which looks at sentence length and complexity of vocabulary, then gives you readability measure in terms of what high school grade would be capable of reading read what you’ve just written. I aimed for a score in the 6-7 range, meaning that kids of 11-12 would in theory be able to read the book. In practice, of course, it was an adult novel, but beach reads ought to be nice, easy, fast reads, so that’s what I aimed for.

In practice, I probably overdid it, but my theory was sound. I managed to erase my past training and sprung into print as a fully formed commercial writer.

I developed some other ideas too. One was an absolute horror of boring the reader. I wanted something on every page to prick the reader’s interest. That might be a plot movement. It might be some snappy dialogue, or a joke, or anything else – but I wanted to sustain the reader’s interest from very first page to the very last.

As a result, I also became relentless at tightening my prose. A nine-word sentence that could equally well be a seven-word sentence struck me as baggy and weak.

Many of those habits stuck with me. I’ve become a much better writer over the years, but I still have that horror of being boring. And it’s mostly worked out for me: my books have sold for decent amounts and my readers have enjoyed reading them. That’s a win, right?

Except that even healthy habits can become limiting. What if I took the risk of a few slower or less vibrant pages, in the hope of gaining some deeper reward? Gone Girl, for example – which is a commercial novel in my genre – took those kind of risks, and the risks paid off massively, not just literarily but commercially as well. You could say exactly the same about The Talented Mr Ripley. You could say the same, in fact, about Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I’m not saying I could have written those masterpieces under any circumstances, but my “gotta be interesting at all times” credo meant I was never even in the game.

Other things too. I used to believe that I had to write / think / edit my way into fluency. I sometimes had an eight-hour writing day and often enough, four hours in, I’d thought plenty, and tinkered with some of my previous prose, and tried out two or three approaches for the next chapter … but not actually got any meaningful new text down on the page. I thought that this three- or four-hour approach march was just the way my creativity came.

Then, along came the kids. I never had an eight-hour writing day again. If I even managed five or six hours, in bursts, over the course of a day, that was a highly unusual day. So out went my arid approach march. I just got more productive.

Another example: I used to think I wrote old-school adventure fiction. (Plenty of excitement, but not much violence.) Then that career dwindled, because my book sales didn’t keep pace with my advances. So I undid my previous belief about what I could write, and turned to non-fiction. But I’m a fiction writer at heart, so I came back to fiction again but in a markedly different genre and written in a markedly different style.

And all this makes me wonder: what beliefs or methods do you have that help you and simultaneously block you? Here are some possibilities:

1. “I can only write in genre X”. I bet that’s not true. I don’t think that’s true of any really passionate writer.
2. “I have to get this book agented before I can start another.” Maybe. But what if this isn’t going to be your breakthrough book? At a certain point, you have to ditch the project and start another.
3. “I would never self-publish: it’s beneath me.” Right. Mark Dawson was published by Macmillan, who sold very few books. Now he self-publishes and he’s sold millions and is one of the highest-earning authors on the planet. But sure. Of course, you wouldn’t want that outcome. Think how awful it would be.
4. “I have to write the kind of prose that my university workshop group would admire.” Right. Except those guys aren’t the ones handing out contracts, are they?
5. “I have to write Great Literary Art. I wouldn’t stoop to anything less.” But debut literary novels need to sell. If you aren’t thinking commercially (as well as artistically) your Great Literary Novel is likely to entertain the contents of your bottom drawer and nothing else. That box of pencils and those day-glo Post-It notes will love it, though.
6. “I like books from the 1930s / 50s / 70s / 80s and I want to write like that.” People sometimes think that because (let’s say) Agatha Christie was and is a huge bestseller, they could write a book like that and do as well. But of course they can’t. If people want a Golden Age crime novel, they’ll turn to Christie or one of her peers. If people want contemporary fiction, they’ll buy something recently published. By all means, write Golden Age crime fiction with a contemporary twist, (The Seven Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle being an obvious example.) But bring something of the now into anything you write.
7. “I need to write with hand-turned pencils in a badgerskin notebook in only my favourite café and only in the morning and only if they’re playing Chopin on the music system.” Yeah, right. You aren’t actually going to write anything then, are you?

Those are some commonly held, and unhelpful beliefs, but I’d be genuinely interested to know what ideas you have that may or may not be helpful … or, better still, which are both helpful and unhelpful, useful and limiting.

So tell me. Or – better still – tell each other on Townhouse. These beliefs are really fruitful if they stimulate. They’re destructive if they restrict. And they’re not static. Something that was helpful last year might be holding you back this year … and quite likely, you haven’t yet noticed.

So notice.

Here endeth this epistle. Oh yes, and they’re charging us by the word for PSes this week, damn their eyes.

Entrepreneur and Jericho Writers alumna Jan Cavelle is phenomenally successful, having grown her own 20-year-strong business from scratch and published a book of expert insights into growing a business, ‘Scale for Success’, with Bloomsbury in 2021. Whether it’s a business or a book, the journey is never easy - and Jan kindly shares her experience of non-fiction publishing with us here.  

January 2020 seems a different world away for all of us.  I was paying little attention to tales of an old lady dying of some unknown disease in remote China.  In fact, I had gone off-grid, telling no one what I was doing.  It was too big, too heart-stoppingly important to me.   

One chilly day that January,  I hauled myself upright at around three in the morning and drove to London, terrified of missing my appointment.  I spent most of the four-hour wait in a tourist hotel pushing congealed eggs around my plate and wondering just how many cups of tea it was possible to drink.  Finally, I walked around the corner to the hallowed offices in Bloomsbury Square to stare in awe at the Harry Potters on display in reception.  

I had gone off-grid, telling no one what I was doing. It was too big, too heart-stoppingly important to me.

But let me take you back a little.  My childhood dream was to write a book, but life and, as a single parent, an abrupt need to make a living took over.  I started a business on a shelf under the stairs in our tiny Victorian cottage and, from non-auspicious beginnings, grew it to something mid-size.  Single parenthood and solo-entrepreneurship are both a recipe for isolation, so it would be years before I met other entrepreneurs. 

Entrepreneurs are an interesting bunch.  They come from all sorts of backgrounds and work in virtually every sector.  They are hugely driven, often obsessive, yet the majority are far less judgemental, far less worried about who they are talking to, and more interested in the quality of what is being said.  Most – definitely not all, but most - are highly intelligent and have great stories to tell. 

By chance, I saw a business publication advertising for a blog writer. Remembering my writing dreams,  I answered, and thus started a decade of writing for a digital publication called Real Business.  I also joined Jericho Writers. 

When I finally parted company with the business, my first thought was retirement.  It took about two weeks for me to miss writing.  

I went back to writing articles, but the dream of a book still niggled.  I started working my way through the Jericho Writers resources, focussing on the merits of attempting either self- or traditional publishing.   

It took about two weeks for me to miss writing.

I had decided to write about sales, my strength - and with the confidence I gained from the articles, I was somewhat cavalier about the writing.  However, to play safe, I submitted my first draft to be assessed by one of the Jericho Writers team.   My editors had always been rather nice to me, so I was unworried when it came to the feedback phone call.   

By five minutes in, I was having to ask for a couple of minute's break because I was crying so hard that I couldn't actually hear. The expert tore it to shreds.  The concept was wrong, the writing careless on fact and atrocious on style. 

It was the very definition of tough love.  It says much for my love of writing that I kept going, and much for his judgment that when I re-visited the manuscript a few months later, I was beyond appalled that I had even considered anyone reading it.   

Chastened, I wrote another manuscript.  I followed all the instructions on the Jericho Writers website and researched likely agents and publishers.  I treasured the reply that told me it was well written (but not for them).  Elsewhere it was silent.   

Relaxing in the glorious summer of 2019,  I had another idea.  People often advise you to write about what you know, and what I know best is how hard it is to scale a business.  I also knew that it is a business stage that many people struggle with.   Suddenly, I realized I had a subject that could potentially be of genuine use to a reader, unlike my somewhat self-interested previous attempts. 

My problem was that I was no expert.  But I did know other people who had achieved the leap successfully.  I started off by attempting to interview friends and get their expertise.  Not an easy experience, with both parties in unfamiliar roles and keen to get back to the usual bottle of wine. 

I dug out old contacts, people who I barely knew.  I trawled the net endlessly for businesses that looked on an upward curve.  A massive hulk of a book, going from start-up through scale-up, started to take shape. 

People often advise you to write about what you know... Suddenly, I realized I had a subject that could potentially be of genuine use to a reader.

At around three-quarters of the way in, I realized that I had forgotten the trad vs self-publishing quandary, and worse, I now had an obligation to do something with this thing to the people who had kindly given their time. 

Back to my Jericho Writers knowledge bank, I went.  I knew that many of the people interviewed would be less than impressed unless it was traditionally published.  Old school, perhaps.  I spent a month putting together three submissions.  The one to Bloomsbury bounced back on my email.  

That bouncing email was the wild piece of luck that we all need from time to time.  Tired and frustrated, I sent a quick tweet off to Bloomsbury to tell them the email was down. It was just before Christmas, so perhaps it was the festive spirit,  but I received a charming reply suggesting I send a brief outline of what I had been trying to send through to the respondee's personal email. 

I thought no more about it.  Other publishers, too, were notably silent.   I was dumbfounded over Christmas to receive an invitation to come into Bloomsbury's offices. Hence finding myself pushing around the congealed egg in January. 

The initial meeting was held in a room full of would-be writers, all of them having the weaknesses of their proposals pointed out to them by the editors.  The size of my project was demolished as being far too broad and my use of UK entrepreneurs was no use to a global publishing house.  I argued - I can split it.  I can get other entrepreneurs. 

I was packed off to the country to form a submission.  Luckily I could still draw upon Jericho for it.  I muttered "possibly for Bloomsbury" into the ears of overseas entrepreneurs and found it a magic key to get them talking. 

Hearing back is not a quick process.  The book had to be approved by several layers of international hierarchy.  At each stage, I was genuinely stunned and delighted to have got that far.  Finally, however, a contract was offered, and I was on my way to being (magic words) a published author. 

I muttered "possibly for Bloomsbury" into the ears of overseas entrepreneurs and found it a magic key to get them talking.

'Scale for Success' came out in February 2021 in the UK and July in Australia and America.  It contains the stories and wisdom of 30 genuinely amazing people from across the globe.  I didn't want to go for the Bransons or the Musks (not that they would have talked to me either), but I wanted relatable people, and I am still stunned by their stories. 

Working with a range of people meant a vast amount of extra work.  They all had to be found, convinced that the idea was good, interviewed, and their approval of what I had written obtained.  If I hadn't so loved hearing their stories, it would have been a nightmare. 

Non-fiction is unbelievably overcrowded.  The self-publishing market has gone wild under the "a book is your business card" mantra.  Looking for a backup plan, I spoke to a few of the publishing coaches who take a fat fee for helping you self-publish.  All were confused by my expressed desire to write "a good book." 

Entrepreneurs of decidedly mixed-level writing skills are employing hugely expensive PR companies to tout them as the next Tolstoy.  There is little chance to compete in the sunshine with that if you are writing for the love.   Reviews on Amazon are so precious – I can read the stars but haven't got the nerve to read the words. 

As for the future, I am having a bit of a ‘what-now’ moment.  I produce a stream of business interviews and articles for my website and other publications, but I would love to do another book. Whether Bloomsbury or any other publishing house would love me to do another book is something for the future. 

About Jan

Jan Cavelle is a writer and entrepreneur who successfully grew and ran her own business for over 20 years. She was chosen as one of the first 50 Female Entrepreneurial Ambassadors to represent the UK in Europe and has been invited to speak on Newsnight. Jan contributed to Real Business for many years and her first book, ‘Scale for Success’, was published by Bloomsbury and cited by publications such as Elite Business, Irish Tech News, Medium, and the Undercover Recruiter.  

Find out more about Jan here.

Buy ‘Scale for Success’ from Bookshop.org here.

Interested in Creative Non-Fiction? We offer a six-week crash course that could be the perfect way in to your new project.

Read about finding an agent for your non-fiction here.

Learn how to write a non-fiction book proposal here.

Getting rejected by literary agents? Here's what to do next.

Good morning!

Today's feature is all about the founder of a brand new agency with unbounded potential.

Catherine Cho launched Paper Literary in May of this year to create an ideal space for storytellers—to 'champion writers from the first edits, to the best deal, to finding readers and beyond.'

After a successful segue into the world of law and public affairs, Catherine returned to her love of literature and began her publishing career at Folio Literary. With experience gained at Curtis Brown and Madeleine Milburn, she has built an impressive list of mostly debut authors that only continues to grow. Catherine's aptitude in dealmaking in both the US and the UK leave her poised to lead a thriving agency of her own.

Well-travelled between New York, London, and Hong Kong, US-born Catherine is now based in the UK. She became a published author last year with her debut Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness.

Check out the interview highlights below, and follow this link to read it in full on Catherine's AgentMatch profile.

"I understand how vulnerable it is to present your work, and how personal it feels, even as much as you try to separate yourself from your work. I try to remember that behind every submission is an individual."

Hi Catherine, and thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us! We're grateful to learn more about yourself and your new agency. The Paper Literary website is set to launch fully soon, and we are very excited to see all the authors and projects that are going to find a home there.

Q. How do you view fiction that straddles multiple genres?

My favourite works of fiction are the ones that straddle genres—I think writers like Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, and Kate Atkinson defy genre. And even books that may traditionally be considered as within 'fantasy' like the 'Red Rising' series or 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' or Robin Hobb—underneath are stories that extend beyond genre. I do think that it's more challenging to find a home for these books in a practical sense, but when it works, I think they can be some of the most powerful stories.

Q. What are you looking for in the opening pages of a novel?

The opening pages are the most important part of a submission. I look for pacing, I look for a strong sense of voice—I am always excited by an unusual voice or an opening that hooks me. I think one of the most difficult parts of writing a first novel is knowing where to begin; I heard that you should begin as close to the action as possible, and I think I agree with this. Often a book will begin too early, and I think having the confidence that a reader will be able to follow you if you drop them in the story is something to learn. Storytelling is an art, it takes practice, and so I would look at the openings of books you admire to analyse and deconstruct them.

Q. What would you change about the publishing industry if you could?

I don't know how to do this, but I would love to find a better way of querying. I think there's a mistaken impression from writers of agents as gatekeepers, and I know that it's frustrating to submit work without receiving a response. I think sometimes agents are seen as a way of receiving feedback, but this is the where things like 'Pitchwars' and writing forums / groups and mentorships are really brilliant.

Q. Tell us about some recent deals that really delighted you.

I recently sold my first novel from my new agency. Unfortunately, I can't announce it until later this summer, but it was an exhilarating experience. Last summer I sold two debuts that I was very excited about, as they had come through submissions, and I worked with the writers editorially before submitting in the US and UK. The first was 'When We Fell Apart' by Soon Wiley, which I sold for a major deal in the US and at auction in the UK, it's a really moving novel set in Seoul, about identity and love. It's stunning. The other was 'Wahala' by Nikki May, which I sold for seven figures in the US and at auction in the UK. It's a wonderful novel about three friends in London whose lives are blown apart when a stranger enters their lives. It is going to be adapted by BBC One, which is just so exciting. It's so rewarding to work with writers; I love the last stage editorial process and then finding a great home for them is a thrill.

Q. As someone who has had their own writing published, how does this inform your work as an agent?

I think that it has helped me a great deal as an agent. It's given me a stronger sense of empathy. I feel a strong sense of responsibility to my writers and clients; it's not a typical business relationship—the author / agent relationship is more than that.

Thanks again, Catherine!

If you're in need of some support and advice in regards to your query letter and synopsis, please do check out our resources on our website; we have lots of information to help guide you on your way. Or, if you're a member with us, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review! Login to access the service here.

Here are nine Odd Things about the market for books.

Odd Thing the First

Consumers are fantastically finicky about books. If you like tomatoes, you like pretty much any tomatoes. Sure, you might have a preference for ones that are vine-ripened, local-sourced, certified organic and picked by the light of a full moon. But, really, you just like tomatoes.

It’s not like that with books. It’s not even like that with genres. You don’t think to yourself, “Hey ho, I like historical fiction, so here’s a work of historical fiction that I haven’t read, and the price seems perfectly OK, so I’ll buy it.”

On the contrary, you think, “Yes, that’s a Renaissance-set book, and I like that period, but I’m tired of all that Florence / Rome / Siena intrigue, and it looks like there’s a boring old romance at the heart of this, so no: I ABHOR AND REJECT YOU, book, even though I like books and I like historical fiction and I even like historical fiction set in this time period.”

Another reader, with tastes highly similar to yours, may fall on that selfsame book and love it.

Like I say: readers – finicky.

Odd Thing the Second

Books are cheap.

That may seem like not such an odd thing, really. Tomatoes are cheap too. So are (random list) flip-flops, toilet bleach, china cups and cauliflowers.

But those things aren’t passionately hand-made. They either come from giant factories or commercial nurseries or whatever the product’s factory-equivalent is.

Books are hand-made from the ground up. You choose your story. You slave over it. You handcraft it. You subscribe to excessively wordy emails that may – may – help you improve your work. Then you find an agent (whose tastes and judgements vary widely) and an editor (ditto), and at each stage there’s a devotedly microscopic attention to relatively minor matters – right down to the placement of a comma.

Most things that are made that way are expensive: compare a pot sold by a ceramic artist with a vase you buy at your nearest supermarket.

But books are both handmade (by you) and mass-produced (by a printing press). And they’re very cheap. That’s odd.

Odd Thing the Third

Writers are badly paid, with insecure jobs, with no pensions and terrible prospects.

That’s not the odd bit, however. After all, other jobs like that exist and, in less wealthy parts of the world, there are loads and loads of jobs like that.

Rather, the odd thing is this: people really, really want to do the job. You do. And (often but not always) the people who most want to do the job are ones with an excellent education and the ability to secure terrific jobs in other, more prosperous sectors.

Oh yes, and if I’m allowed to have an O.T. 3(b), then I might add that almost everyone involved in the production and sale of books sells their time for less than they could get elsewhere, Jeff Bezos being one notable exception.

Odd Thing the Fourth

Normally, a prestige product costs more than its more ordinary counterparts. An Aston Martin costs more than a bottom-of-the-range Volkswagen. (I bought my first car for less than £1000 / $1500, and very rubbish it was too. It was bright yellow and once went ninety miles an hour, but only going downhill with a strong wind behind it.)

You can buy 250g of loose-leaf tea from Fortnum & Mason’s, a posh British grocer, for £12.95. Or you can buy 80 tea bags (a similar quantity, in terms of cups produced) from any old supermarket for as little as £0.75.

But books? To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the greatest books of the twentieth century, is currently being sold for £6.55 on UK Amazon. A Time to Kill – a good quality, but still not exceptional, legal thriller – is selling for 12% more at £7.37. I also managed to find a debut legal thriller written by no one you’ve ever heard of selling in paperback for £11.99, an 80% mark-up on Mockingbird. That debut book may be almost twice as good as Harper Lee’s classic, but I’m going to guess otherwise.

It is, admittedly, true that if you look at ebook prices, you’ll tend to see a slightly more orderly lineup, with prices that better reflect prestige, but only slightly more orderly, even then.

The big point here is that highly rated and well-known products don’t really compete on price. As a   rule of thumb, book prices are basically determined by what kind of packaging you choose. That’s like tomatoes that cost twice as much if you buy them in a paper bag than if you buy them in a plastic one.

Which is odd, right?

Odd Thing the Fifth

Most fiction is digital – that is, most fiction is consumed as either ebook or audiobook. There aren’t any public and up-to-date figures for how much adult fiction is digital, but about 70% would be a reasonable guess. If you add in print books sold online, the total would be more than 75%.

So you’d probably guess that a bestselling ebook would have more cachet than a bestselling print book. And guess, furthermore, that a bestselling paperback would probably have more kudos than a bestselling hardback.

You’d probably also guess that stores which only sell physical formats don’t have real authority or weight in the world of books. An analogy might be the world of music, where, sure, it would be nice if your album topped the vinyl charts. But you and everyone else knows that the vinyl charts are a quirky little throwback, and what you’d really most want is to lead the way in downloads or streaming.

Only, this is the world of books, where everything you’ve just guessed is dead wrong. It’s almost perfectly true that the less economic weight something has, the more likely it is to have prestige. Huh?

Odd Thing the Sixth

Suppose you went to a concert and more than 50% of people walked out halfway, the composer or orchestra would presumably be considered useless, right?

And if people went to an exhibition of art, and a large majority of people left without seeing half the rooms, you’d think that the artist must be a load of rubbish.

But it’s commonplace for people to abandon books unread. Data from Jellybooks, an analytics company, suggests that most books are unfinished by most readers. Of the books that Jellybooks have tested, only 5% are finished by more than 75% of readers.

In other words, most books disappoint most of the time.

And that’s after intense scrutiny by agents and editors and all the other people who try to make your book great. And some of the least-finished books are amongst the most-critically lauded.

Which is odd, huh? Oh yes: and if Book X had a great critical following, but then word got out that particularly few readers finished that book … that information wouldn’t alter the critical consensus one iota.

Which is weird, right?

(Almost as weird as the fact that we use the word iota, a letter in the Greek alphabet, to signify insignificance. The phrase not a jot comes from the same source.)

Odd Thing the Seventh

In the music industry, streaming pretty much slaughtered older physical formats.

In the news industry, countless papers have gone bankrupt or have lost a ton of profitability.

In photography, grand old names – hello, Kodak! – went bust, bankrupted by digital.

In pornography, a monster wave of digital content pretty much eliminated the commercial structures that had been in place before.

And in publishing – the industry looks much the same as it always did. Yes, the big publishers now report a steady 25% or so of sales in ebooks. (Self-publishers and digital-only publishers explain why the total share-of-ebooks is so much huger than that.) But really, the experience of a published author today is much the same as it was twenty years ago. The firms are still the same. The production process is still the same. The industry itself considers itself to have been through wrenching change, but that’s code for “wrenching by the standards of publishing.”

Which isn’t that wrenching.

Odd Thing the Eighth

These days, any old idiot can self-publish a book. Assuming you have a cover and a manuscript to hand, you can, in theory, upload your book to Amazon in about ten minutes. A day or so later, that book would be available to essentially every reader in the world.

At the same time, firms exist which do much the same job and don’t always do it better. The only extra wrinkle: they also have the power to sell books through bookstores and supermarkets (though there’s no guarantee that physical outlets will ever actually take your book.)

Those firms have long heritages and, of course, brand names. But as brands go, those brand names are virtually meaningless. People might trust a breakfast cereal because it said ‘Kelloggs’ on the box. Almost no one carries a book to a shopping till on the basis that it has been published by X rather than Y. Readers care a lot about the book and the author. They care about the publisher so little, they barely notice it.

So those brand names have no significance, right?

Well, actually yes. The people who care most passionately about the brands, are the authors who are willing to give up 100% of net royalties from ebooks (which they’d get if they self-published) in exchange for 25% net royalties (which they’d get from their trad publisher), plus the authority of one of those brand names that consumers truly don’t care about.

Somewhat Odd Thing the Ninth

You care enough about this whole damn game that you’ve read yet another stupidly long email from me, even though it doesn’t actually tell you anything that will help you write, edit or market better.

Jeepers. One of us here must be crazy.

Ah well. We’ll get more “how to”-ish soon, I promise