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A few years back, I used to live two or three hundred yards from the Thames. I swam a lot, often a mile or two at a time. In summer, I used to swim so long that my cocker spaniel, a particularly anxious and loyal dog, would start to fret. At a certain point, she’d break out of the garden and trot down the river footpath until she had found me and ‘rescued’ me. Her relief and joy were always boundless.

But that was summer. My first swim of the year was always May 1, a date which has a sunny sort of feel to it, but the water at that time of year still held the shudder of winter ice. There was often something literally breathtaking about taking the leap. Your chest clenches and your breath locks up and for a short moment you wonder whether any of this was at all a good idea.

Now all this is to introduce a writing dilemma we’ve all faced - a critical one.

So: You have an idea for a book. You want to write the book. You start to develop your ideas. But when do you make the leap? When do you go from thinking about something to writing about something?

These things have consequences.

Skip too fast over the planning phase and the risk – a huge one – is that you are embarking on a project that has no chance at all of ever being realised.

Let’s say, for example, you want to write a crime novel. You think, yes, people always love serial killer novels. You choose a city (Phoenix? Liverpool? Chipping Sodbury?). You choose a weird and wonderful habit that the serial killer has. (Uh, let’s say his murder methods combine exotic flowers and dangerously musky perfumes.) Then you pick a detective with a few little personal quirks (collects matchboxes, drinks too much, something dark in his/her past.)

Boof! You’re off to the races, right?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that you could write a book like that, and get to the end, and do all your edits, and arrive at a completely competent manuscript. 

But also no, because why would any agent want to take this on? They get a ton of competently written serial killer stuff. Why take yours? The probable answer is that they wouldn’t. They mostly don't.

On the other hand, where the "go too early" risk is potentially lethal, the risk of spending too long in the writing / planning phase is rather smaller. The issue, really, is that you waste time and, perhaps, let a little air out of the inspirational rush you started with. Those risks are annoying and silly, but they’re not quite as existential as the ‘leap too soon’ risk.

So when to start writing? How do you know? What is it like to judge that leap correctly?

Well, I don’t always know. I sometimes get it wrong. But here’s an example of where I nailed it.

I was ready to write book #6 in the Fiona Griffiths series. The theme needed to tie in nicely with my Welsh setting. There had to be an opening murder. I wanted an underlying crime that was novel and intriguing. (Not just weird nasty guy being weird and nasty. Not just drugs. Not just prostitution.)

I googled around, looking for ideas about what crimes existed. Found something about art and antiquities theft and fraud. Discovered that this area is one of the world’s most significant criminal enterprises.

Good. That felt like a nice idea to latch onto.

But Welsh history posed a bit of a problem. The history of Wales goes back a good old way, but it’s never been the centre of British art or prosperity. If I wanted to write a book about antiquities fraud then Rome, or Avignon, or Cairo, or Jerusalem would all look like better settings than Cardiff.

Only … and this was Inspiration #1 … maybe not. If I wanted to go really nuts, what about a story that involved King Arthur? He was an ancient Briton (that is: Celtic, not Anglo-Saxon) and there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest that, if he existed, he was quite possibly Welsh.

(And, by the way, it’s quite likely that he did exist – ancient sources on both the British and Anglo-Saxon side suggest that he did. He wasn’t a king, though, nor was that ever suggested until much later.)

I liked the idea of Arthur and, if antiquities theft was to lie at the heart of my book, then that antiquity just had to be Arthur’s sword, Excalibur. (Or, more accurately, Caledfwlch: there’s no way Arthur would have called his sword by a cod-Latin name that was popularised around a millennium later.)

I loved this idea, but was worried that if I centred a contemporary police procedural on an actual Excalibur, I’d just lose too much credibility. So the bad guys had to create a fake Excalibur, then find a way to sell it. Obviously that meant they had to find a way to ‘authenticate’ the discovery.

That felt complicated – but good-complicated. Crime stories should have a twisty, hard-to-follow structure. That’s part of their yumminess.

But so far, I felt I had something credible – plausible – a nice idea for a book.

But did I have a stunning one? There was something still missing. So I didn't yet start writing. I was still in the thinking / planning / researching phase.

I scratched away at reading source material. (Books on Arthur. Material on how to fake antiquities. Stuff about the Dark Web.) I made little notes about my starting murder. I had some nice-looking scraps, but I didn’t have the courage yet to make the leap.

And then – and I remember the moment – I had Inspiration #2. How was my Fiona Griffiths going to catch the bad guys?

And it came to me. The best place to sell dodgy stuff is on the Dark Web – where you can find highly encrypted, super-anonymised eBay stores for drugs, guns, counterfeit documents, anything you like.

If you wanted to sell a counterfeit Excalibur, that’s where you’d want to sell it. So how would Fiona stop the bad guys selling their dodgy sword? Answer: by making one of her own! By selling hers as well! With two swords on offer, no buyers would want either. So the bad guys would have to contact Fiona to get her to remove her sword from sale. And bingo: with contact made, Fiona could catch the bad guys.

The idea worked perfectly at one level: it would introduce a totally unexpected mid-book twist, perfect for this kind of novel.

But it would work perfectly for my character too. Her audacious, three-steps-ahead, rule-breaking resourcefulness was just perfect for this twist. I remember bounding around the garden in my joy at figuring this out.

It’s like I had the keystone that would lock everything else into place - bring the story and my character into perfect synchrony.

And for me at least, once you hit that sense of inspiration – the shape of the story, the keystone, the excitement – it’s fine for you start writing immediately. If you’re more of a planner than I am, then it’s also fine to plan things out a bit more before that icy leap.

And I should say that taking the leap at the right point in your book’s development doesn’t mean that everything will run fine from there on. You’ll still find plot knots that are desperately hard to untangle. You’ll still encounter patches where you feel the book has lost all its energy and reason to live.

In the end, a powerful inspiration – the insight which secures your book’s basic viability – still requires the whole discipline of craft and time and attention.

But for me at least, if I have the security of an idea I know I can trust, the rest never gets too far off track. I never wholly lose my appetite for the story I’m telling.

Find the idea - so solid you know you can count on it. Then the leap into the water. That way round, every time.

When Karen Menuhin ventured into self-publishing with her debut, Murder at Melrose Court, she didn't know what to expect. She's since published seven books in The Heathcliff Lennox series as eBooks, paperback and audio, and made it to #1 on Amazon in the USA.

In this interview, we'll hear about where she began and the realities of having a career as a self-published author.

I started writing in 2018. My husband had just completed his autobiography, but his publisher had gone bust part-way through the process and we didn’t know where to turn. I'd read about self-publishing in the newspapers, so volunteered to find out how to do it. Once I figured out the basics, I realised the opportunities it offered. The daunting barriers of the traditional publishing world had been removed, and I'd always loved books and stories - so I thought 'why not give writing a try?'

I was 60 years old with nothing to lose... so I set about writing a book. I had tremendous fun developing the story and characters; Murder at Melrose Court wasn't meant to be particularly funny, but I think there's quite a lot of humour in it simply because I enjoyed writing it so much.

The daunting barriers of the traditional publishing world had been removed.

I joined Jericho Writers early in the process, so it hadn't taken me long to realise I knew next to nothing about the nitty-gritty of self-publishing or writing a novel. I read everything I could find on the site, watched the 'how to' videos, and listened to lectures. Once I'd completed the book and uploaded it to Amazon, with the correct files and cover and all the details you have to add (categories, keywords, ISBNs and the rest), I had to think about how to bring the book to the attention of readers.

Taking the plunge into self-pub

Someone in the Jericho Writers community had posted that they'd given away their debut novel free for two days. This seemed like a good idea to me, and it didn't cost a bean, so that's what I did. On December 3rd, 2018 I pressed 'go' or whatever it was, and the book went live.

1,100 ebooks were given away in 2 days. I was dismayed that so many books had been snapped up - I thought there would be nobody left prepared to pay for it. I was wrong. 'Murder at Melrose Court' has since sold hundreds of thousands of copies, for which I'm eternally grateful.

1,100 ebooks were given away in 2 days... I thought there would be nobody left prepared to pay for it. I was wrong.

It was by no means an effortless ride, though. A few months after 'Melrose' was published I noticed sales falling away quite dramatically. I realised that I'd have to learn about marketing. I turned again to Jericho Writers and attended a one-day seminar in London run by Harry Bingham and David Gaughran, along with the wonderful Rachel Abbott (a true heroine of the self-publishing world). I took copious notes about Facebook adverts and Amazon ads and heard about Bookbub, then went home to digest the information.

Marketing is a costly and time-consuming process, it's probably the biggest burden of the self-publisher, and it's essential to get it right. I can't say I've ever really got to grips with it. My eldest son, Jonathan, took an interest in it and now runs it for me. Without that support, my writing time would be slowed to about half of what it is now. That doesn't mean I'm absolved from the day-to-day business of self-publishing - there are still 101 other jobs to do. Admin, correspondence, liaising and directing proofreading, editing, graphics, formatting, social media and promotions and a great deal more than I want to think about.

It's added a new dimension to our lives and a few extra pressures.

My dear husband, Krov, was a documentary filmmaker. He understands the sacrifices and helps in every way he can. He carries out a lot of research for me, reads every chapter, discusses plots, and is encyclopaedic on weapons due to his military background. It's added a new dimension to our lives and a few extra pressures. I've just published my 7th book in the Heathcliff Lennox series and have started on number 8. I thought I'd be retiring in my 60s, but I'm working harder than ever.

It has its rewards though. I bought Krov a beautiful used Maserati Quattroporte for his 80th birthday, we drive around Europe discussing means of murder with our dog and cat in the back.

Life is to be lived.

Audio - a crucial format

The audible version of Murder at Melrose Court was number 1 in the USA in July 2021. The narrator, Sam Dewhurst-Phillips, is superb. He acts all the different parts and brings the books to life, so the quality of his work is essential to the success of the audiobooks. I hadn't initially been convinced by audiobooks, but the market has grown exponentially and is now over a third of my sales. Having your book narrated is not a difficult process. It's all explained on ACX (the audible arm of Amazon) and is easy to follow.

The reality of self-publishing

If asked what the crucial factor to successful self-publishing is, I'd say it was writing good books. There's no other criteria than that, although dogged determination probably helps too.

There are definitely pros and cons to self-publishing. The downside is the responsibility – everything rests on you. The upside is the control; I'm not answerable to anyone, and I get to keep all my own income (after extensive costs, of course).

I think the best aspect of writing is sharing the stories with readers. My books are murder mysteries so they're effectively puzzles and I challenge the reader to solve them – it's a sort of game between us. They write to me, telling me if they worked it out, or not and if they enjoyed the stories - usually, they do. It's very satisfying and inclusive, and I really enjoy being a part of it.

If you’d like some help with your writing, try our copy-editing service.

One of the challenges that assails self-published writers is the sense that everything is important. You should have a mailing list – you should have a highly engaged Facebook page – you should tweet – you should be on LinkedIn or Pinterest – you should write more books – you should advertise better – you should set up promos – and much more besides. That sense of obligation can get into your head, and not in a good way. One of the ways you can spot a newbie self-pub author is that their email footer is often desperately cluttered. Follow me on Twitter! Like me on Facebook! Buy my book! Join my list! Come to my birthday party! Try this recipe! It’s like a blizzard of calls to action, as a result of which any normal reader is inclined to take no action whatever. It just feels overwhelming … and a very little bit needy. (Which is OK: we forgive all authors pretty much everything. We’ve committed every sin in the book ourselves.) But the issue is a general one and it’s not limited to self-pub authors. The question, time and again, is simple: what do you want from this? For example: what do you want from your book? Consider the concept of your book itself. It’s not that uncommon for us to get people asking us for help finding an agent for their book, which is presented as a mixture of:

• A stunning true-life story about the writer’s adventures in – wherever
• Eight lengthy chapters about an abusive childhood
• Two dozen poems that are very personal to the author … and are often, not always, unreadable by anyone else.

Now, I hope it’s blisteringly obvious that there is no market whatsoever for such a book. The stunning true-life story could be publishable and, yes, there is a market, of sorts, for poetry. But once you throw all these things into a great book-pie together, there’s just a mess. With manuscripts like these, the author invariably has a wildly mixed set of motivations. They want a strong commercial publisher for the adventure part of the memoir. They want emotional release in relation to the childhood trauma. They want some kind of private, aesthetic joy in seeing their poems in print. But no one cares. Publishers want books they can sell. Books like these are unsaleable. I speak from experience here. Perhaps the most remarkable project we’ve ever worked on was published as West End Girls by Barbara Tate. To sell that book, we needed to cut a 165,000 word manuscript down to 90,000 words – work that we did in-house because the book’s 80-something author was no longer able to handle work on that scale. But all we really brought to bear was simple clarity of purpose. We just found Barbara’s story and released it. The book went on to be a Top 10 bestseller – it’s phenomenal. The same basic question brings clarity time and again. For example: What do you want from your book cover? The answer ought to be simple: you want it to sell the book. But very often, writers think, ‘Yes, but I have this vision of a lighthouse on the cover and my Uncle Neil used to do a lot on Photoshop and putting a text on a cover can’t be that hard, and I really want the cover to express my vision of the work, so …” The result? Almost always a hopeless cover. A pro designer doesn’t think that way. They know almost nothing about your book, bar the genre, a one-page outline and perhaps a list of possible visuals. So they’ll work with that – and with a single goal in mind: sales. It’s not unusual to come across a book whose cover connects almost not at all with the content. But who cares? Once the sale is made, the cover has largely done its job. A friend of mine was presented with a draft book cover by her Big 5 publisher. The cover was awesome, but it had nothing, literally nothing, to do with the book. So she said yes to the cover and rewrote one scene in the book to accommodate the image introduced by the cover art. Bingo! What do you want from your Amazon page? You want your Amazon page to sell your book. Or, to break things down a little further, you want your Amazon page to at least induce the “Look Inside” click, then you want the “Look Inside” material to induce the buy. So your blurb needs to induce the buy. Your title does. Your subtitle does. Your pricing does. And you need to induce the buy in people who don’t know who you are, who are giving your book page about seven seconds consideration, who don’t like wasting their cash, and who are only a click or two away from Lee Child / EL James / Harlan Coben or whoever else. That means a tightly worded blurb. A clear reason to buy. A mood and offer that’s closely united with the promise made by the cover. It also means ditching any verbiage that’s about you and what you want to tell the world. What do you want from your agent query letter? You want the agent to turn – with interest – to your manuscript. That’s all. So keep the letter short. Make the purpose of the book – its USP, its hook, its soul – clear. Say a sentence or two about you. Then get out. You’re not making friends with the agent. You’re not even looking to impress the agent. You just want them to turn to your manuscript. Clarity. Sales - and writing. Again and again, you will find that to make a good choice, you need to prune your motivations to just one. And in nearly every case, that motivation needs to be ‘I want to sell more books’. That’s not because I’m vastly greedy, but because selling books is hard. Making a career is hard. Finding readers is hard. Unless you prioritise those things, relentlessly, you may not get into print at all. And of course, there is one vast area where of course you should bring multiple, complex and layered motivations – namely, when it actually comes to writing your book. Yes, you should think about what readers want, but in a funny way, you shouldn’t think about that too much. In crafting the basic concept for the manuscript, you have to consider your market very closely. But thereafter, just write the best book you can. Take my Fiona Griffiths work, for example. In terms of genre, it’s contemporary police procedural and I pretty much follow all the rules of my genre. But thereafter, it’s all about me and my taste. I like humour, so there’s humour. I care about prose style, so my writing is carefully (and unusually) styled. I evolved quite an unusual central character, because I liked writing about her. I certainly didn’t run some kind of spreadsheet on what fictional police detectives ought to be like. That’s more or less it from me for this week. I will just say, however, that if you are serious about self-publishing, we are offering what may be one of the most amazing courses ever developed. It’s hands-on, practical and with loads of feedback from Debbie Young, someone who knows self-pub so well, she practically invented it. More here.

Good morning, everyone!

Today I am very excited to introduce you to Maddy Belton, an agent with Graham Maw Christie Agency.

Maddy Belton joined Graham Maw Christie in 2018, initially as an intern and then as the Agents' Assistant. She became a full-time agent in 2021, focusing on her growing non-fiction list. She also consults for Spread the Word as part of their London Writers Awards.

The Graham Maw Christie Agency was established in 2005 to focus exclusively on non-fiction. The agency has a diverse base of award-winning clients, with many of their titles becoming national and international bestsellers, Sunday Times bestsellers, prize winners and published in multiple languages worldwide. 

Maddy is solely interested in non-fiction. She is drawn to memoirs and autobiographies, and books that explore psychology. She is interested in titles that highlight marginalised voices including, but not limited to, those in the LGBTQ+ community and writers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour.

Check out some highlights from our interview with Maddy below.

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"The great thing about agenting is that you live and die by your taste. In a way, it's like sophisticated matchmaking."

Hello Maddy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today! We would love to know more about how you became an agent, what your role entails, what you're looking for in submissions, and advice for querying authors.

Q. What do you want to represent? What's at the top of your wish list, and what sort of authors are you interested in representing?

I love almost all books, but I really enjoy memoir, particularly narrative memoir that explores underrepresented and underappreciated people, professions, and places.

I'm interested in queer stories, memoirs that experiment with form, in the vein of In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. I also have a passion for books that deal with psychology, whether that be memoir written by a therapist, or books that deal with the history of psychology. I'm a big fan of The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan.

I also represent cookbooks, and I love to cook myself, so I'm always on the look-out for passionate bakers or stories that can be told through food.

Q. Is there any sort of non-fiction you're not interested in?

Not really, but sometimes there are practical considerations. I think the mistakes writers often make when querying agents is submitting something that's incredibly similar to something which is already on their list. I'd say that these manuscripts are often tricky to represent because you end up with a conflict of interest. For example, I have a really great author who's writing a book on British Black history. I probably wouldn't take on a book that repeated the content I already represented for several years, even though I love the topic and am passionate about this genre.

Q. What do you want to see in a query letter?

I immediately want to know who you are, where you are with the project and the best way to contact you. You'd be surprised how many submissions don't have that basic information.

I tend to ask people I'm thinking of representing three questions: Who are you, why are you writing this book, and why does this book need to be written now? There needs to be a sense of urgency and a sense of place. It's good to think about the market so I want to know, from the offset, who is going to buy this book and why they need it.

Q. What do you want to see in a synopsis?

I normally ask for the first 50 pages or 3 chapters. It differs depending on the book, but a mini proposal would be useful. This includes the concept of the book, competing or comparable titles, and a comprehensive chapter breakdown or synopsis. The breakdown is really important because it shows that you as an author have thought about the narrative arc and the argument of your book. It also tells me how much work needs to be done on this book so that it is ready to submit to editors.

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

If you are writing a memoir, you need to create a case for the reader to care within those opening pages. What I'm looking for is an appeal to my empathy, something that will make me invest in this person. Why am I going to read hundreds of pages about their life?

In terms of history books, social commentary, or essay collections, I'm looking for a question, a mystery or a problem. I want to be surprised by these first pages, there might be a sense of tension, or a controversial argument or a personal story but whatever it is it needs to reel me in and spike my interest.

Q. Could you tell us a bit about your experience in the world of literary agency?

I followed what I loved into book publishing. After university, I interned for Jane Graham Maw and Jennifer Christie at Graham Maw Christie and loved it. I became their assistant and then an agent.

The great thing about agenting is that you live and die by your taste. In a way, it's like sophisticated matchmaking. I really like finding manuscripts that resonate with me and helping these voices get out into the world. I also learn so much from my clients, who are all from different walks of life and I enjoy building relationships with them and helping them add another string to their bow.

The full interview can be found on Maddy's AgentMatch profile.

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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 member with us, a member of the Writer Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review!

Our family has a tradition in which my wife and I bury some ‘treasure’ and some time after Christmas the children find it.

A couple of times, we’ve led them to the treasure via maps and clues, but last year, accidentally, the kids found the treasure before we’d done the whole map ‘n’ clue thing, and their excitement was wildly greater than it had been in earlier years.

So this year, we aimed to follow that same basic template. The kids had already searched our garden and found nothing. They didn’t grumble exactly, but their disappointment was there.

Then, yesterday, Nuala and I led them up the road for a walk. It wasn’t a treasure-hunt, just a chance to walk in some rare January sunshine.

On the way out – nothing.

The light started to fade. We began to return home. As we did so, one of us saw a single gold (chocolate) coin shining from the mud on the verge.

Had that coin been there before? The kids weren’t sure, but no, it hadn’t been, I placed it there while they were running ahead.

They started to inspect the site more carefully and saw a second coin gleaming from a nearby tree.

We adults did the adult thing: warning that someone had probably just dropped a coin, it probably wasn’t really chocolate, none of these things really meant anything – but then one of the girls found a spade leaning up against a tree, a sure sign that there was digging to be done.

With a little bit of guidance, they found the right spot – a place where the ground ivy could be simply brushed aside and some clean, bare soil exposed. The kids were, by this point, almost leaping with excitement, except that the tremble of the impending discovery kept them almost hypnotically glued to the spot.

Then they started digging, made a mess of things, and asked me to help. I plunged the spade into the earth and we all heard the soft thud of a spade hitting up against a hard object in the soft earth.

Tabby, the older girl, then scraped away enough soil to expose an old metal box with yellow markings. At this point, the kids were literally jumping and screaming. Tabby had to hand me the spade, so she could jump and scream too.

We levered the box (an old army ammo tin, bought from eBay) out of the ground, brushed it off, opened it – and found a mass of gold coins, more than 100 of them.

And in all of that, it occurred to me that the whole adventure was a kind of story-making. The very faint grumbling discontent that this year, no treasure had materialised. An evening walk in end-of-day sunshine. A quiet, domestic ordinariness on the journey out – nothing to rouse suspicion. Then, on the way back, a tiny sign of something unusual. A sign repeated by that second gold coin in the tree. A sign affirmed, emphatically, by the presence of a spade. Then a frenzy of action – characters responding to their story situation – and the genuinely thrilling moment when spade thumped box,

For almost all of us, and perhaps for literally all of us, the appetite for story begins in childhood. My kids are aged 6 and 8, which is about the peak for make-believe play of all sorts. The world just shapes itself into story at least as easily as it shapes itself into an adult-style, empirical conversation about reality.

And it occurred to me that, if we’re writing for kids, it’s blooming obvious that we need to write those finding-treasure type scenes. We need to generate the sense of wonder, of discovery, of the quotidian breaking into the magical.

But isn’t that also, and equally, the case when we write for adults? If you’re a crime novelist, doesn’t the discovery of a corpse offer something like the same kind of thrill? Even in properly hi-falutin’ literary fiction, isn’t there a demand for something like that moment? The moment when, in Atonement for example, a lewd letter is misdelivered, when ordinary consensual sex is mistaken for something darker.

I won’t say that every published book out there has those moments, or even that every successful book does. But they nearly all do and they probably all should.

I think alive in all of us, as readers or writers, is the desire to re-stage and re-encounter those moments of magic. Unlike the kids, we know it’s fake, but we don’t care, we just want that feeling repeated.

And, for us as writers, I think that means we have to be honest about discarding some of our adulthood when we write. Of course, to get by in our complicated modern world, we need to reason, and study evidence, and build a picture of reality as it is. But as writers, we just have to drop some of those attitudes, or loosen them.

We need to allow ourselves the moment of watching a spade plunge into earth believing, that yes, really, there’ll be treasure beneath.

Who owns your book? That sounds like a nice, simple question, so here are four answers to choose from. 

Who owns your book – the trad answer

The essence of a publishing contract is simple. You sell your book in exchange for (a) an advance and (b) sales-based royalties. But the first four words of that sentence are the really significant ones, the ones that count more than anything else in the contract. You sell your book.

The publisher, not you, will determine the cover, blurb, marketing plans and sales strategy. They will probably make a polite effort to keep you in the loop and not unhappy, but that’s about it. All the final decisions will be made by someone other than you. You can yell, cajole, persuade and reason – but the decisions lie elsewhere.

Furthermore, suppose that, as is increasingly common, you sell World rights or World English rights. (For example, let’s say you are a British author selling World rights to a British publisher. That publisher would publish the book in the UK, but then sell the rights to other territories to publishers operating in those territories. “World English” means the same thing, but in relation only to sales in the English language, so that translation rights are excluded.)

Once you’ve sold World rights, those rights are there for your publisher to exploit, not you. You will not get consulted about sales strategy. You won’t learn much about what is or isn’t happening with your book. Yes, deals will be presented to you for your approval, but only in a “take it, or leave it” way. There’s no meaningful choice on offer.

In short, once you sell a book to a trad publisher, it is not your book. Don’t be unhappy about that – it’s the culmination of everything that you wanted – but don’t be under any illusions as to what is happening.

 Who owns your book – the indie answer

If you’re an indie author, of course, the answer is stunningly different – and utterly simple: You own the book.

No ifs, not buts.

You can change the cover at any time. You can (and will) change pricing whenever you want. You can change your distributors. You can move in and out of different formats as you please.

It’s your book.

 Who owns your book – the book’s answer

The first two answers talk about your book as a product and in terms of commercial exploitation. And, OK, that’s important, but it doesn’t really get to any interesting artistic truth.

But think about this.

Let’s say you embark on your manuscript with a particular set of goals. Perhaps you want to write a modern country-house style murder mystery. You want to imitate the crystal elegance of an Agatha Christie plot, but brought into the modern day.

Fine. You need an investigator, of course, so perhaps you choose a former Paratrooper with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. That combat experience has shattered him in some ways, but has also left him with something like higher sight in matters of murder and human conflict. He’s an excellent choice of detective. Terrific.

Now you, the author, have really only one task, which is to write the best book that you can.

Your choice of hero brings a challenge: do you honour the emotional complexity of his character? Or do you attempt to properly imitate those great Agatha Christie novels that elevate the puzzle way over any real psychological depth for the detective?

It’s a no-brainer.

When your manuscript comes into conflict with your original goals, you need to change those goals. The manuscript has to win every time. Yes, you are authoring your manuscript, but you are also constantly listening to it. What does it want? What does it need from you?

In this sense, your manuscript isn’t owned by anyone at all. It owns itself. It knows its mind. Your only task is to bend low and listen closely. Then do what you’re told.

Most relationships wouldn’t work well like that, but the author-manuscript relationship really thrives. Not only does the manuscript get better that way, but you have more joy in the writing. More belief.

 Who owns your book – an answer for January

But it’s January, the season of winter damps and New Year’s resolutions.

Sp the hell with publishers. The hell with self-publishing. And (whisper it softly) the hell with what your manuscript wants.

This is your year. It’s your book. Don’t be bossed around by what publishers want, or might want. Don’t be bossed around by what the Amazon algorithms are said to want. Don’t be bossed around by these damn emails or by any advice from the wise heads of Jericho.

Write.

You’ve got nothing to work with until you have words on a page. That first draft is just hauling a block of stone into your studio. The editing is where you start to carve it.

Jane Smiley says, “Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It's perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.”

So let it exist. Make it exist. Your task for the year.

Attaboy. Attagirl.

Good morning, everyone!

We start off the new year with a wonderful interview with Leticia Gomez!

Leticia Gomez is the founder of Savvy Literary, a literary agency based in the US. She specialises in representing non-fiction books and has represented works across the spectrum of non-fiction genres. According to Publishers Marketplace in 2020, Leticia ranked number one in the numbers of deals she made in the non-fiction: narrative category, number two in non-fiction: anthology, and number eight in non-fiction overall, among all literary agents in the United States.

Leticia has worked in the publishing industry for nearly three decades where she has published her own newspaper, authored and published three books, and edited numerous fiction and nonfiction manuscripts written in both English and Spanish that have gone on to publication. As a literary agent, she has placed more than 200 books with independent and mainstream traditional publishers.

Check out some highlights from our interview with Leticia below.

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"I firmly believe that everybody has a story inside of them that's just itching to get out, so don't ignore that feeling."

Good afternoon Leticia, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today! We would love to know more about how you became an agent, what you're looking for in submissions, and advice for querying authors.

Q. What brought you to agenting?

I got my start in the publishing industry by publishing a bilingual newspaper with my best friend. Then I got married and wanted to start a family. I relocated to Texas and continued in the publishing industry by doing magazine freelance writing work until I got pregnant with my first child. At this time I decided I wanted to do something else to keep me occupied, so I wrote a romance a novel and found my own publisher for it. That's what gave me the first taste of being a literary agent. I knew from then that I wanted to work in publishing as either a literary agent or as an acquisition editor, but back in the early 2000s a lot of acquisition editors really had to be based in New York or California, so I chose to become a literary agent. And then in 2007, I started my own agency, Savvy Literary Services.

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

Upmarket contemporary women's fiction is always at the top of my list because women are the biggest consumer of books, and there's also more women writing. I really want good upmarket contemporary women's fiction - I will do some historical, but it's a bit more difficult to place. I'm essentially open to anything written for women, by women.

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

In non-fiction I specialise in narrative non-fiction, whether it's historical or contemporary. The reason I really love narrative non-fiction is because they're very desirable in terms of being optioned for film and television. So true stories, narrative non-fiction, and memoirs. And then anything that's self-help for the adult market across all the boards, whether it's business, self-help, health, and advice and relationship books. I also represent a great deal of inspirational and spirituality books.

Q. Is there any genre you'd rather not receive?

In fiction, I don't do erotica and horror, and really those are the only two genres that I will shy away from at first sight. I don't do poetry. I also don't do children's picture books. I do however do middle grade and young adult novels.

For non-fiction there's very little that I won't take a look at.

Q. What do you want to see in a query letter? And what do you hate?

With fiction I want the writer to give me their best well thought out elevator pitch. I want the title of the work, the genre, the word count, and a really good overview of the plot/storyline. I would attach to it the first 3 chapters. I know some agents ask not to send attachments but I prefer attachments than to have it pasted into the body of an email because that amount of text in that space becomes overwhelming.

For non-fiction I really have to see a well put together book proposal. Even if the author has the full manuscript ready I just want to see the proposal.

Q. Same question when it comes to the synopsis. What should writers do? What should they avoid?

I prefer a synopsis on the shorter side, between 2 and 5 pages. Anything longer than that and it becomes difficult to follow. Keep it short and sweet. I do, however, want them to have a beginning, middle, and an ending. You don't necessarily have to include all the spoilers though. I want the author to set the stage for the story and set up the intrigue, but not let the cat out of the bag.

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

I'm a sucker for great one-liners. I like a good balance between narrative and dialogue - I don't want all narrative or all dialogue. I like for the dialogue to be very witty, crisp, and authentic sounding to the character.

Q. How can a book proposal convince you to take on a book or to hear more about an idea?

Firstly, the overview has to hook me. Then, it has to answer the following questions: what is the concept of the book, why is now the best time to write and publish this book, why is the author the best person to write the book, and what are the reader takeaways? A proposal that answers all of these questions will capture my heart and make me want to read more.

Q. What is a day in the life of an agent like for you?

The one thing I will say is that the life of an agent is very unpredictable. It's difficult to plan out your days in advance.

The first thing I do is grab my coffee (I can't function without coffee), turn on my computer, and check my emails. Usually by this point my day has already been derailed because something has come up in my inbox that I need to give immediate attention to, so my plans from the night before fall apart. For me the first order of business is to look at emails that might contain publication offers, as those require immediate attention. Publication offers are my number one priority. Number two is putting out any fires that have emerged in my inbox. Number three is business development. Number four is reviewing new submissions, unfortunately at the bottom of the chain.

Q. Any final words of advice for querying authors?

The first thing I have to say is to summon up the courage to query. Give it your best shot because sometimes that's all you get in life, one shot. Be yourself; let your personality come out. It's not just a piece of writing it's a person with a dream, so show me just how much it means to you through your writing and through your query.

There's also no better time than the present to write. If you've got a story inside of you then you need to get it out. Whether that's a fiction story, or non-fiction, get it out of your system. Don't worry about getting it out perfectly, just write it and worry about going back and editing it later. I firmly believe that everybody has a story inside of them that's just itching to get out, so don't ignore that feeling.

The full interview can be found on Leticia's AgentMatch profile.

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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!