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Rachel Davidson, long-time Jericho Writers Premium Member and now a part of our Writer Support team, is currently studying on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. She’s agreed to share her experience of the course with us month by month.

First up: a look at how she made the decision to invest in her writing – and believe in herself...  

Hey there – thanks for popping by. Let me introduce myself. I have been a Premium Member with Jericho Writers for many years. I’d give you the precise number, if only I could remember! Suffice to say, Jericho Writers has consistently walked beside me as I traverse the writerly landscape. 

More recent times have seen me joining the Jericho Writers team, in Writer Support – which means that for three days a week, I get paid to think about writing, talk about writing and help other writers with their writing. I love it! 

And now there’s another big tick on my to-do list. I’ve been accepted onto the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. The first month’s topic is Planning and Plotting. Well, I’ve been planning and plotting this since the earliest of days. Let me go back to the beginning and tell you my story... 

I’ve wanted to be an author since primary school, where I discovered the wonder of writing stories. More than this, I discovered the joy of my stories being read. My teacher was a fan of the tales I wrote: a series of Nancy Drew-esque mysteries which my identical-twin characters solved with surprising ease. He was a kind teacher. I was awarded the English Literature Cup at our final ‘graduating’ assembly. Destiny set. I was going to be an author. 

Turn the page to the next chapter – the scene is my first secondary school English lesson. I am having my tall poppy head sliced off. I have no memory of what was actually said: can’t even remember the teacher’s name, or what she looked like. I do remember the crushing reset. How foolish, to think I could be a writer! My efforts were lacking. I did not measure up. Just who did I think I was? She had pointed at the part of me that thought I couldn’t and said: “You’re right.” 

It took me thirty years to get back to my dream.  

It took me falling in love.  

One day, my new husband asked: “Who do you think you are? Who do you really want to be?”  

“An author, please?” I replied. 

“Please?”  

He frowned, then pointed at the part of me that thought I could, and said, “You’re right.”  

That was ten years ago. Since then, I have written five full novel-scale manuscripts and have started my sixth. I self-published the first three and proved a boatload and more to myself. I could write books which did sell, and that people enjoyed reading. I decided to change genre and aim to be traditionally published – and this is the track I’m on today.  

My fourth manuscript garnered one competition long-listing and sixty-three agent rejections. My fifth manuscript earned a long-listing in another competition and is currently collecting its own set of rejection-gongs. It hurts. It’s okay. It’s the process. I’m older. I know better now to keep going, and why it is important to do so: because my heart and its contents matter. 

That moment of permission from my husband was my inciting incident – and the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme is perhaps my mid-point. Could this be the moment at which everything will change and there’ll be no going back? It’s a big investment in my dream of becoming the best novelist I am capable of being. I want to hone my craft and grab the opportunities the course provides. I want to be proud of my writing: confident that I’m on my way to being an accomplished – perhaps even a great – storyteller.  

There are going to be a few more ups and downs in this plot line of mine. A crisis (or two) is to be expected. Moving between the first, second and third acts always involves some level of hanging off cliffs, yes?  

Ultimately, I’m hoping this is a redemption story – that a happy ending looms in the future for me. If I end up attracting the attention of an agent or publisher – or if I don’t – I am giving myself permission to find out what I can achieve. I’m plotting and I’m planning. I’m defining character and honing my voice. 

So, who do I think I am? I’m an author – learning to fully inhabit the role. Perhaps you’ll let me share my progress and experiences with you, as I work through the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme?  

I hope so.  

See you next time, 

Rachel 

Rachel Davidson is a long-term Premium Member of Jericho Writers prior to joining our Writer Support Team, Rachel loves helping hopeful writers, such as herself, to solve their problems and take a step or two closer to achieving their writing dreams. Rachel has previously self-published a trilogy, the first of which achieved bestseller status in fourteen Amazon categories in the UK, US, Australia and Canada and is now seeking her traditional publishing debut with her latest manuscript. You can find out more about Rachel via her Instagram @RachelDavidsonAuthor.

OK, battle of the clichés. Which is truer: “You can’t judge a book by its cover” or “A picture is worth a 1000 words”?

Well, please pick your preferred platitude – but when it comes to book marketing, then the thousand-words cliché beats the can’t-judge cliché into a cocked hat. A cocked hat with gold frogging and a generously sized rosette.

The fact is that, whether a reader is looking on Amazon or on a bookstore table, they start with only two really key bits of data. (I’m assuming, of course, that you don’t happen to have a name like Margaret Atwood or Dan Brown. If you do, I’d say that potential readers have three key bits of data, and the name wins out.)

The two bits of data are:

1. The book cover image

2. The title.

There may be shoutlines or puffs or subtitles on the cover too, but a reader doesn’t really grapple with those until they’ve assessed the first two items. And the hand doesn’t reach for the book, the cursor doesn’t move in for the click, unless those two things intrigue the target reader enough.

So how do you get the click? That is, probably, the most single important moment in the entire marketing chain.

This is a complicated question and every book and every situation is different, but my guidelines would be as follows:

Communicate genre

Take a look at these two images: 

Which is better? The first is the current book cover, the second one is from the movie DVD. Assume that the book is newly launched and can’t yet sell itself on name and reputation alone.

And the answer, surely, is that the actual book cover does a very poor job. The book is a dystopian fantasy involving an all-action teenage heroine. The readers you want to attract are young adults who want a dystopian fantasy featuring an all-action teenage heroine. The first image is … what? A historical novel? A lament for vanishing wildlife? A literary meditation of some sort? It’s entirely unclear. (That’s not a criticism of the 2025 cover, though. The book has become iconic, so it can afford a purely iconic cover.)

The DVD cover on the other hand does everything it needs to do. Dystopian? Yep. Fantasy? Well, probably, because most contemporary teenage girls don’t mess around with flaming arrows. Tough teenage heroine? Uh, yes. And the font says “speculative / future-set” not “Roman / classical / literary / boring.”

So, that’s your cover’s first job. Communicate genre. Establish an immediate link with the reader you’re targeting.

Communicate niche

Within any genre, there are any number of sub-genres. Cosy crime has a different vibe and a different readership from mainstream police procedurals… and both of those feel very different from gangland, mobster-type crime.

Your cover needs to find the niche within the niche. Your target reader needs to become curious with her very first glance.

Ignore your book

OK, you don’t have to ignore what actually happens in your book, and if the image in the cover relates to the text itself, then so much the better. But the worst self-made covers I’ve seen all fall into the trap of trying to interpret, over-literally, the story and settings of the actual text.

Perhaps those covers would be satisfying to people who had already read the novel and understood the allusions. But this is a marketing tool! People don’t know what those allusions mean. The cover has to attract people in – not provide an after-dinner mint to people who have just enjoyed your offering.

Here’s a cover that has effectively nothing to do with the text of the book:

The book is – duh! – not about moths and windowpanes. But who cares? It’s beautiful. 

Layer your messages 

Clare’s book cover also nudges a further point. The title has an opportunity to convey a message (or messages) of some sort. The cover art gives you a second opportunity to do the same. 

So don’t repeat yourself! Set up an interesting reverberation between the two. 

Suppose that book cover had shown an open hand and a moth flying away – that would have repeated the message of the cover… and produced something utterly bland. 

As it is, the cover here says, “Trapped.” The title says, “Released”. What’s going on? It’s that sort of question which invites further investigation. That’s the question which makes you read the shoutline. (“A tragic accident. A past you can’t escape.”) 

In effect, the reader is being led along like this:

1. Beautiful image (of the right sort of mood) attracts the eye

2. The title and the image kind of fight each other, prompting curiosity

3. The shoutline (and the title, and the domestic image) confirms your hunch that this is a psych thriller and that there are interesting mysteries to explore

4. You pick up the book and turn it over. 

Step 2 – the layering of the messages – is absolutely crucial to the whole sequence. 

In effect, the title and the cover are dancing a tango – but in loose (“open”) embrace instead of close embrace. You feel the linkage, but you also feel a distance.           

The open question 

For the same kind of reason, the title / cover needs to invite a question. That’s why the classic romance cover (woman in big dress, man with very open shirt) invites derision. It’s so single note: a tune played with one finger. 

The best covers – even in the romance aisle, where readers are seeking a relatively simple happy ever after story – all play with two hands, a full range of notes. Books like these: 

Those covers are beautiful... they talk about romance and they intrigue. 

That book about summer yells about happy summer days – but then strongly suggests them ending. Huh? What happens to this happy, splashy couple? 

And a book offering a love story shouldn’t talk about endings, surely? So what’s going on with the pair in the Yulin Kuang novel? 

“Isabel and the Rogue” has a rather more typical romance title – naming both parties and suggesting the guy has some growing up to do – but the image subverts that. The yellow-dress woman looks very much in control. The nice chap sitting next to her looks very mannerly and not at all rogue-y. So what’s going on? The same title with an image that just repeats the ‘girl + rogue’ meme of the title would be killingly bad. 

In every case, it’s an open question which intrigues the reader and prompts exploration. I think it’s probably true that EVERY good cover creates that intrigue. 

Work at thumbnail size 

Whether you’re working with a trad publisher or whether you’re commissioning your own self-pub cover, you will find that your designer presents you with your cover image at the hugest scale the internet can deal with. Ideally, a designer would like you to view the cover at monster size in the comfort of your own home cinema. 

Which means that the first thing you should do is shrink that damn cover down to Amazon-thumbnail size and see if it still works. Every test I’ve suggested in this email needs to work at diddy-size as well as at full size. As a matter of fact, I always think it’s helpful to superimpose your draft cover on a screen grab of an Amazon search page to see if your cover holds up against the competition you will face.  

Make a fuss 

My last command is for you, not your book cover. 

And it’s this: I know you are a very nice person. You’re like the gentleman seated next to Isabel, very nicely mannered, always ready to pass a bun and apologise for any crumbs on the carpet. 

But if your cover is weak, say so, say so, say so. You have a pram, I hope? Throw toys out of it. Throw your sticky bun on the carpet. You wish to hurl, not throw? Then hurl away. Hurl hard.  

Do not accept a mediocre cover. I’ve done that too often in my career (publishers coax you into acceptance), but do not do it. 

Make a mess. Yell. Scream. Get yourself a decent cover. That’s easy to do if you’re self-publishing. Harder to do – but just as essential – if you’re trad-publishing. 

You can go back to being nice again afterwards. 

Feedback Friday is all on titles this week. Anyone can have a go. I’ll be around, offering feedback, but my feedback is only for Premium Members, so if you’re not a PM, you have a sad life ahead, unless you Do What Needs To Be Done. 

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

We’ll do titles this week. Tell us what your book is about in 2-3 sentences, and tell us the title you’ve chosen. If you have a subtitle or shoutline in mind, then tell us that too. 

We want to feel a ripple of intrigue – a question we need answered. 

Once you're ready, log in to Townhouse and share your work here.

*** 

Til soon,

Harry. 

Do you struggle to silence the voice in your head that asks: 'Who are you to call yourself a writer?' or 'Who d'you think you are, spending precious time on a project that's bound to go nowhere?' You're far from alone. All authors - published and unpublished - struggle to shut this voice up from time to time. Rosie Fiore is an editor, mentor, the author of eight novels and a tutor on both our Novel Writing Course and Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. Here, she shares her top tips for banishing impostor syndrome for good... 

How do you answer that dreaded question, “What do you do?”

“I’m an author.”

“I’m a writer.”

“I'm an aspiring writer.”

“I’m trying to write.”

“I write a bit in my spare time.”

It can be difficult to name ourselves as writers: to take pride in our work and our achievements and to keep our courage up. Writing is lonely and tough, and sometimes it’s hard to persuade yourself to keep going.

As a writer, I bear the scars of failure and indifference, and I’ve done my share of staring into the long dark night of the soul. I’ve also mentored hundreds of writers who face the fear every day. So, here are five things I tell them (and try to tell myself).

1. There is no magic threshold

What’s that insistent little voice in your head saying? Mine says things like: “Call yourself a writer? You haven’t published anything / finished anything / written anything good.”

When I started running, the same voice told me I couldn’t call myself a runner because I hadn’t run a marathon / half marathon / 10k, and I wasn’t very fast. I am here to tell you that this is nonsense, in both cases.

Of course I'm a runner, even though I am only running a slow few miles. And if you’re writing, you’re a writer.

You’re doing the work. It isn’t an exclusive club. You’re not aspiring, unpublished or trying. You’re a writer. Own it.

2. Get yourself some cheerleaders

Sometimes, your courage will fail you. You will look at the words on the page (or the lack thereof) and think that you can’t do this.

You will need someone else to tell you that you can. Maybe that will be your significant other / mum / child/ best friend. But if not, you need writing buddies - so find your people.

Join a writing group, in person or online. Do a course. Look on the Jericho Writers Townhouse. Other writers will cheer you on, and by supporting them in return you will learn and gain so much.

3. Back yourself

Oh, this one is difficult. I did a playwriting course once and the teacher, John Donnelly (a fantastic playwright), said these two words. “Back yourself.”

My mind instantly rebelled and that insistent little voice spoke up. “You’re rubbish,” it said. “Lazy, undisciplined, not very good. Why would anyone back you, least of all yourself?”

“How do you talk to yourself?” John asked, as if he could hear my inner voice. “Would you talk to anyone else like that? Don’t speak like that to the person you need most in the world.”

I have a tiny post-it by my desk now that says, “Back yourself.” And when the ugly voice surfaces, I try to remember to look at it.

4. Celebrate the small wins

Celebrate the big wins. Hell, celebrate ALL the wins.

You finished a draft? Take a walk in the park. You revised that tricky scene? Cup of tea and a biscuit. Someone asked for a full manuscript? Well, that’s worth a dinner with friends!

I have a special dance I perform every 10,000 words (my family loves it and doesn’t roll their eyes, honest!).

Don’t wait for some mythical future date when you achieve all your goals. Try to make every step of the process joyful.

5. Bum in chair, fingers on keyboard

If doubt creeps in, keep going. If you think it’s rubbish, keep going. If you want to scrap it all and give up, keep going.

Nothing silences that insistent, ugly inner voice like the clatter of typing.

And remember:

“People saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.” – Puck magazine, 1903.

You’ve probably heard the line “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” You’ve probably also heard it attributed to the humourist Mark Twain – although, ironically enough, that attribution is doubtful at best.  

But have you ever considered it as a piece of writing advice? It’s actually a tremendously helpful way of thinking about creative non-fiction and the way you have to wrestle reality onto the page. 

Here are five useful lessons (perhaps we could even call them truisms!) that the famous phrase suggests: 

1. Tell the truth 

The truth isn’t the only thing that matters – and shortly, we’ll look more closely at why that’s the case. However, it’s still vitally important in non-fiction.  

The best way to get readers to believe in you as a narrator is to make sure everything you say is credible. Check your facts. Verify your sources. Test your theories. Where you are doubtful, say so. Do not lie. Your book is pointless if it doesn’t feel trustworthy. 

2. Remember: you are telling a story 

Telling the truth doesn’t necessarily mean telling the whole truth. Your duty is to your reader – not to every single thing that happened.  

Just because something has lodged in your memory, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s important. Always be thinking about what moves your writing forwards. What does your reader need to know to understand your narrative? What is less important?  

Also, what’s interesting? Remember, stories are meant to be fun to read. 

3. Remember that good dialogue on the page is not the same as real speech 

Think about how journalists write up quotations. They don’t give us all the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’, the hesitations and repetitions of natural speech – but we don’t (usually!) think that this is a deception.  

It’s okay to make speech run more fluently and fluidly – as long as you stick to the essential meaning and import. 

4. Real people have real feelings 

These feelings can be hard to predict and easy to hurt. If you’re writing about real people, you have to be careful – both from the point of view of not getting sued, and in line with the demands of basic humanity.  

Think carefully before you put anyone into your book. Are you sure you need to include them? Are you sure they will remember things in the same way you do? Are you certain your portrayal is accurate? Is there a justification for disguising someone’s identity? 

5. The truth matters 

I know I’ve already (kind of) said this, but it’s worth repeating. It’s worth stressing that the stories you tell as a non-fiction writer are worth telling, in spite of all the potential difficulties of doing so.  

The truth counts. Today, yesterday, forever.  

Setting it down on the page might just be the most important thing you do. 

At Jericho Writers, Sam is a tutor on both the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme and the Novel Writing Course, and also offers one-to-one mentoring and editorial support. You may also like to check out the Introduction to Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction course.

I yap on a lot about novels in these emails: I’ve written plenty of novels; I like writing them; the vast majority of you guys are writing them too.

But I’ve also written non-fiction: Five books under my own name, but I’ve been quite involved in ghost-writing or similar with several others.

So: I like non-fiction too. And, within that, I like creative non-fiction: writing narratives that are essentially true, but using broadly the same set of literary techniques that a novelist brings into play.

I’m bringing this up now, because we have a new course available: a 6-part a 6-part video course on an Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction. The course is led by Sam Jordison, a writer himself, but also the founder of the quite brilliant Galley Beggar Press. The course is free to our lovely Premium Members, naturally, but you can buy it for £99 if you really want to. (But why would you want to? You can get everything in Premium Membership for £150.) More info here if you want it.

Of the memoirs I’ve worked with most closely, two come to mind.

The first is West End Girls – a memoir by Barbara Tate. She grew up before and during the War. She had a terrible, flibbertigibbet mother and was mostly brought up by a stonily cold, icily respectable grandmother. So she emerged into the world of post-war London, a young and now-independent adult who had never really experienced love.

And then – in 1948 – she met a glamorous, exotic, beautiful and warm woman, Faye, with whom she instantly bonded. Faye just happened to be one of the most hard-working and successful prostitutes working in Soho and she needed a maid. Barbara became that maid.

Barbara’s book tells the story of that friendship. The author was in her 80s when the book came to us. It was vastly long and discursive. It didn’t really know what story it was meant to be telling. With a younger author, we’d have simply given guidance and let her do the work. Given Barbara’s age, I essentially took on the work myself, cutting out the excess material and stitching the remaining parts back together.

Barbara had gone on from maid-ing in Soho to achieve plenty in her life, but when I told her that we’d sold her book for good money to a major publisher, she was thrilled. We sat in her sunny Ealing garden and she waved a cup at me and said, “Harry, this will be the crown of my life.”

That book went on to be a beautifully well-published bestseller.

Another book I especially remember was Please Don’t Make Me Go, a story with a lousy cover and a weedy title (both chosen by the publisher to line up with the Misery Memoir kitsch, then very much in vogue.)

The author, John Fenton, was a tough, smart man. His book was a brutal, brilliant account of his time in a young offenders’ institution – he’d been sent there, on the basis of no actual offence, by a dad who just wanted rid of him. The book ended with an astonishing climax: just as things were going to go very badly indeed for the young Fenton, he managed to break into the office of the man who ran the place and found material so compromising that the outcome flipped in an instant, from very bad to very good.

And? My conclusions from working with those books?

Simply that pretty much every technique that applies to a novel applies also to non-fiction, of the kind we’re talking about.

Dialogue? Yes, John and Barbara both wrote dialogue that could easily have lived in fiction.

Scene construction? Definitely the same.

Characterisation? Yes, of course.

And the structure of the story itself? Yes, yes, yes. That’s key. Both the books I’m thinking of had this astonishingly novelistic structure – and in both cases with endings that just linger in the mind.

Now, personally, I think it’s OK if non-fiction writers nudge their facts into shape a little. I don’t mean outright lie, but I do mean shape. Omit something if it occludes the structure you’re building? Skip over some things, bring others into much greater prominence? Yes to all that.

Build your story.

I do warmly recommend Sam’s course. (The guy is something of a publishing genius and it’s just brilliant that we can bring a bit of him to you.) But also:

The reason why I talk so much about novels in these emails is that pretty much everything I talk about applies to you non-fictioneers too.

Build your story. Write well. Have fun.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

If you’re writing creative non-fiction, then let’s have the opening page of your book, or any chunk that represents a kind of manifesto for the book people are about to read.

As soon as you're ready, log into Townhouse and post your work here.

And those who are completing the Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction course too, don't forget to complete the lesson assignments and share your work in the course forum.

If you’re not writing non-fiction, then you’ve got the week off. And a Happy Easter to you.

***

Til soon.

Harry

All agents have passions. At our Festival once – late at night and after plenty of wine – one agent started listing hers. I know there were sharks on her list and haunted houses, and child killers, and twins, and (I think) anything Victorian, and definitely mistaken identity, and… the list went on. Somewhere out there, a perfect novel exists for her with all those things in one beautifully weird melange.

But? Mostly agents want surprise. They want that sense of, ‘Gosh, I had no idea I’d want something like this, but now that it’s in front of me, I really, really do.’

Pitch

I wrote a week or two ago about how the ghost of an elevator pitch needs to glimmer in your query letter. And it does. The ingredients for a compelling story need to be present. The agent needs to feel that intrigue from the very start.

Because I plappered (my daughter’s chosen verb) about that recently, I’ll say no more now.

Good writing / instant authority

Agents say they want a distinctive voice; of course they do. But if you try to analyse what that really means, I think it comes down to this. Agents want to read the first page of a manuscript and just know that the writer is in perfect control – of their sentences, their characters, their story.

That control will, most of the time, come with a voice that sounds like that specific author, and nobody else – simply because you don’t normally get that level of control in over text, without putting your own personality into it.

But does John Grisham, say, really sound so distinctive? Or Stephen King? I’m not sure they do. They are masters of their craft, of course, but it’s not really their voice that you’d want to pick out.

So, I’d focus less on voice, and more on authority. Can a professional reader tell from the first page or two that you are in control, and that good things lie in wait? The answer needs to be yes.

A plausible story

Most agents will regard your synopsis as the least important part of your submission package – which is just as well, because synopses are tedious to write and tedious to read.

That said, synopses can be massive time savers. Let’s say I were a busy agent. I’ve read a query letter and I’m intrigued. I’ve read the opening page or two, and I feel the authority of the writing.

So now what? I read 200 pages, only to find that the story massively disappoints 2/3 of the way into the book? Or discover that the basic theme is simply not marketable?

Well, I should say that the clues given from the query letter and opening pages are generally more solid than that. Those authority-clues are powerful and they don’t often lie. But still. It takes four hours to read a book. It takes five minutes to read a synopsis.

So an agent will mostly want to sense-check that synopsis for the basic story shape. The question is essentially: does this feel like a novel? Could this story fill out an 80,000 word book?

An avenue to market

But also, through all of the above, any agent will be asking themselves the one key question that will determine their decision: can I imagine how a publisher would market this?

What kind of cover? What kind of pitch? What sales messaging to the putative retailer? What comparable books?

Now, for clarity, you don’t have to be a marketing expert and you don’t need to come up with solutions. Or rather: it may be an asset if you can supply those solutions, but it’s not really your job to do so. (And if you do want to do so, then do so with tact, ‘In the vein of recent bestsellers, such as Robin Banks’s The Greatest Heist and Lottie Lightfingers’ The Wallet That Wandered...’)

But the agent is a professional salesperson, and therefore also a marketing expert. They’re a saleswoman (or man) whose job is selling to editors. Those editors will then have the task of selling your manuscript to their team and then, if they’re successful, selling your book to retailers and, through them, to the public. In fact, the number of successful sales needed is significant:

• Sale #1: You to your agent
• Sale #2: Your agent to an editor
• Sale #3: Your editor to their acquisitions committee
• Sale #4: your publisher’s sales team to retailers
• Sale #5: Your publisher’s marketing team to the public.

Your agent knows your book only succeeds if all those lamps are shining green. It’s that sense of commercial potential which will, almost certainly, define the response you get back.

A line of green lamps

And for you to achieve that line of green lamps? Well, by the time you’ve written your book, you’re kind of stuck with it.

But the advice never really changes. It all comes down to:

1. Knowing your market. You need to be deeply involved, as a reader, in the market you want to end up writing for. That knowledge will insert itself into your text. It’ll ensure that you write for the market as it is today, not as you want it to be.
2. A great pitch. I hammer away at elevator pitch a lot, because that pitch is just crucial. A so-so written book with a great pitch? That’ll sell. Most really big bestsellers are moderately written but with great pitches. If your pitch is weak, even great writing may not save you.
3. Good or excellent writing. Great pitch + good, competent writing: that’ll work. Adequate pitch + genius levels of writing: that’ll work. Any sort of pitch + clumsy writing? That’s a fail, every time, as it jolly well ought to be.

But that’s what we’re here for, right? To help you get to the point of pitching to agents, or self-publishing, with confidence.

This thing that you want? It ain’t easy, but it is doable. And we’re here to help.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Another slightly left-field task this week. (Though I realise this is a sporting terminology, I don’t really understand. I mean, in cricket, we’d normally say leg-side, except that you’d need to say off-side if the batter was left-handed. And since bowlers bowl quite happily to left-handed and right-handed batters, there’s no big difference between a legside ball and an offside one. So left-field or right-field? I don’t get it.)

Anyway. Here’s a different sort of task.

1. Give me the pitch from your book, in any form you like (super-short / short / 2-3 sentences.)

2. Find two or three books which are recent, successful and comparable. Give me the pitches from at least one of them.

That’s an ouchy task: demanding to do. But if you can do it, and your book sits happily amidst your chosen company, then you have a marketable work on your hands.

As soon as you're ready, log into Townhouse and post your work here.

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I’m writing this email on Tuesday. It’s my birthday today, one that I share with my wife.

The kids are being… not horrible. There is sunshine and there are tulips and much tea. Tulips are maybe my absolute favourite flower, except that I do have a soft spot for dog roses, and I’ve got enough of Wales in my blood that I am easily seduced by a daffodil.

And cherry blossom? Hmm. But I think tree-flowers need a different category, no?

Til soon,

Harry.

As you’d expect, there’s quite a lot of research into what makes people buy stuff. And, as you’d expect, writers are mostly very, very, very not interested in exploring it.

But that’s tough on you, because this email is going to tell you anyway. And yes, I know you want to write books and leave selling to someone else. But that’s not how it works. Even if you’re traditionally published, you’ll be asked to review blurbs, think about cover art, review social media yadda and email lists… and, if you self-publish, then you’ll be thinking about Facebook ads and the like as well.

You don’t have to turn into the sort of person who wears a black shirt, and a gold medallion, and fake tan so thick it looks like a kind of golden yogurt. But you do have to engage with how your book strikes people on first view, not just on full view.

And here are some tips. They’re all based on actual scientific research (hence the slightly weird precision in the data), so what follows isn’t just an opinion piece. That said, books are different from a lot of consumer products, so you have to adjust accordingly. (For those interested: here's where I got my data.)

Say you

Address the reader as though they’re in the room with you. Say, ‘you’. The result of that direct address is that people feel around 20% more involved in your brand. Since you’re really trying to build that direct relationship, that involvement matters.

Say I

And be you. Don’t depersonalise yourself. Not 'This story was written to thrill,’ but, 'I wanted to thrill you.' Keep the relationship front and centre.

The difference between 'I' and 'we' in a study was a sales improvement of around 7%. My guess? With a brand that ought to be focused on you as author, the positive results are probably greater than that. The author-reader relationship has the potential to be way stronger than (say) the toothpaste-manufacturer / tooth-owner relationship.

Here and now

For the same sort of reasons, don’t jump into the past. Keep any marketing-type copy in the present tense. The stats say that this helps it sound up to 26% more helpful / compelling. And you want to compel.

Be assertive

There are different ways of being assertive. You can make firm claims rather than wishy-washy ones. (So ‘all’ or ‘always’, not ‘mostly’ or ‘often’.)

Strong negatives also show assertiveness: 'you won’t read a better thriller this year' just sounds punchier than 'this will be one of the best thrillers you’ve read for a long time.'

The effect of this kind of language can boost engagement by up to 18%.

Avoid technical language

Yes, your book may be a near-future SF story about a moon-mission gone wrong. But keep your blurb clear, not cluttered. If you write 'When the landing craft hit the rim of a crater…', the reader knows instantly what you mean. If you write 'When the orbital descent vehicle foundered on the lip of an impact basin…', you’ve lost your zing.

I’m not talking here about the language inside the book – your book and your characters and your story will need to determine that. But don’t fail to get people through your entrance door. And that means, keeping it clear and keeping it simple.

If you do clutter up your language, sales drop by up to 16%. (And, honestly, in the context of books where the nearest competitive product is only a click away, I think sales will drop a lot more than that.)

The rule of three

An interesting one this, because at first sight it doesn’t apply to books. The rule is: list three benefits, not two, not four, not five.

Why? Well, three just beats any other number by 10.4%. It appears that three works because it establishes a pattern without seeming too fake.

Additionally, there’s evidence that says if you list three excellent benefits of X, and then also two good benefits, consumers take a kind of average score and think, ‘Yeah, not so excellent really.’ Sticking only with the excellent options means that consumers were willing to spend up to 37% more.

Now, you’re not offering a baking tin or a waterproof jacket. You’re offering a book, and the benefit of a book (assuming it’s fiction) is just that it’s good and will grip the reader. So maybe listing benefits doesn’t really apply.

Except that… Netflix uses the rule of three all the time. Take a quite excellent programme – Harry & Meghan, for example: it’ll be described with a trio of adjectives – Captivating / Investigative / Social-cultural.

I think the same applies to any time you try to intrigue a reader with your book. Take my Fiona books. If I used a trio of words, it might be something like ‘Intelligent, Intense, Suspenseful’. If I tried to layer things on top of that (‘Literate, dark, celtic noir, thought-provoking’), the pitch to the reader becomes so muddled as to be indecipherable.

And that rule of three applies even where you might not expect. Let’s say you’ve picked the adjectives and themes you want to push. Everything needs to point at those specific things.

So if you have a reader-review that chimes beautifully with the adjectives you’ve picked – then great, use it. But quite likely, you also have a reader-review that says something positive, but not aligned with your core themes. In that case, including the review is muddling the message. It’s leaving the reader uncertain about what you’re offering.

So pick your themes – three of them – and work those hard.

Syntactic surprise

And here’s an interesting (and more writer-y) piece of of advice:

According to research shared by Thomas McKinlay, simply using a surprising sentence pattern in your copy can help you get a 127.5% increase in click-through rates (CTR).

So here’s your expected sentence structure:

Red Bull will give you energy for hours.

Take a trip anywhere you feel like going.

Uber Eats can deliver a delicious meal to your door.

Boring, right? And here’s the same thing, made a little less expected:

Red Bull gives you wings

Belong anywhere. [AirBnB]

A delicious meal at your door, by Uber Eats.

There used to be a way to calculate ‘syntactic surprise’, but the online calculator tool seems dead. That’s a shame, but you’re a writer – you don’t need it. Making nice sentences is your thing, right?

And a 127% increase in click-through rate? Wow. That’s the difference between an Amazon bestseller and one that’s nigh on impossible to market profitably.

Use these tools. Use them well. Be happy.

***

FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Ooh, a challenging task this week. It comes in two pieces:

1. Give me an Amazon book description of 150 words or less.
2. Give me a ‘shout line’: a phrase or sentence (max 12 words, and ideally under 10) suitable for the front of your book. So for example: 'Every family has secrets – some more deadly than others.'

We’re going to be looking for clear and compelling, mixed with a dash of syntactic surprise. A hard task this one, but a goodie.

As soon as you're ready, log into Townhouse and post yours here.

***

That’s it from me. 

Til soon,

Harry.

Julie Hartley, a Canada-based writer of historical fiction, shares her experience of writing for Bookouture.

When I submitted my first novel to Bookouture, a division of Hachette UK, I wasn't fully aware of the difference between digital-first and traditional publishers. I had published three books with independent presses, and I was seeking an agent in the hope that my next novel might find a more global readership. Then, I stumbled on the Bookouture website. I was delighted to see that you could submit to them unagented, and I sent off my manuscript at once.

From submission to publication

The novel I submitted to Bookouture was historical fiction set in occupied France in 1942, and I heard back from them within only a couple of weeks. The acquisitions editor felt the novel was not a fit for their lists, but on the strength of the manuscript she asked if I might be interested in writing something set in England during World War Two. Thrilled, I sent them several synopses, and they selected the two with the strongest hooks.

Publishing companies survive because they know how to sell books, and a strong hook is critical. My first novel for Bookouture, Her Secret Soldier, is about a lonely young woman who discovers an injured German spy in the ancient forest behind her home. She feels compelled to help him, but in doing so risks becoming a traitor to her country. My second novel, The Promise She Made, is about a feisty young girl in 1940 who, desperate to keep her younger sister safe from the Luftwaffe bombs, books passage for them both to Canada against the wishes of her family. Their ship is torpedoed by the Germans in the middle of the Atlantic, with heavy loss of life. A novel must have a strong hook for a publisher to sell it, and my experience with Bookouture taught me digital publishers are no exception.

After several emails and meetings, I received a contract to write both novels. I hadn’t thought such things still happened! However, a shock awaited me when I read the contract. The first novel was to be delivered in just three months.

Digital-first publishers are not a fit for every writer

Writers working with digital publishers often publish two or three books a year, building a brand and a following of loyal readers. Initially I found this pace daunting, but quickly discovered that I absolutely loved it. Writing to a tight deadline means beginning with a detailed plan, at least for me. I brushed up on five act structure and expanded the first synopsis into acts, then chapters, and finally scenes before beginning the first draft.

Every morning for eight weeks I wrote from 5am to 9am and, despite working full time, finished the novel with a week to spare. Meeting a tight deadline meant changing how I worked in other ways, too. My first draft is always handwritten, but there wasn’t time to type in the second draft as I might usually have done, so I tried talk to text. To my surprise, this had a positive impact on my manuscript, since the musicality of a sentence is much more apparent when it is read out loud.

Tight deadlines wouldn’t work for all writers, but I discovered that immersion in the lives of my characters day after day was something I really enjoyed – along with the knowledge that, for the first time, I was writing something that would definitely be published.

A good editor can make or break an experience with a publisher, digital or otherwise

I'm fortunate enough to have a fabulous editor at Bookouture. She is quick to spot structural issues in a manuscript, which is what you need when the deadline is tight – but she is also kind, and she sees the editorial process as a dialogue.  I had initially wondered if the tight publication schedule of a digital-first publisher might mean hasty editing, but this was not the case. My experience with Bookouture has been nothing but positive.

The pros and cons of working with a digital-first publisher

With a traditional publisher it can take years to grow your novel from hook to book, but with a digital publisher the journey is much quicker. In addition, many digital publishers accept submissions from unagented writers. These were both huge positives for me. On the flip side, working with a digital publisher means you don’t see your books in shops, at least initially – something that might be an important consideration for some writers.

It's difficult to say what the future of digital-first publishing will be in an industry that is ever-changing, but for now at least, digital publishers offer writers an additional route to publication – and at a time when it can seem harder than ever before to succeed creatively, this is surely a good thing.

Julie Hartley is the author of two historical novels, both released by Bookouture. She lives in Toronto, Canada where she runs creative writing classes for teens and retreats for adults. You can find Julie's latest novel here. You can also find out more about Julie and her books on her website, and stay up to date with her latest releases via Facebook and Instagram.