{"id":6777,"date":"2022-04-29T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/authority-platform-and-wit\/"},"modified":"2022-04-29T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T12:00:00","slug":"authority-platform-and-wit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/authority-platform-and-wit\/","title":{"rendered":"Authority, platform – and wit"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t always talk enough about non-fiction, which is daft in a way, because plenty of you write it and I\u2019ve always enjoyed doing so myself.<\/p>\n

So this week: a few thoughts on non-fiction \u2013 which novelists should read as well, as there are some thoughts in here for you too. In particular, there\u2019s are two basic motors at the heart of the acquisitions process which matter every bit as much to fiction as it does to non-fiction.<\/p>\n

Those motors take the form of two questions that an editor has to be able to answer for every potential acquisition:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Will readers like the book?<\/strong> That is: is the book any good, given its target market?
    \u00a0<\/li>\n
  2. Can we sell the book? <\/strong>It doesn\u2019t really matter, in a way, how good a book is, if the publisher doesn\u2019t have an effective way to sell it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    With fiction, a positive answer to the first question doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that the second is taken care of. Ages ago, I remember helping an editorial client with a kids book that had bullying as a theme. As far as I was concerned, the manuscript\u2019s obvious warmth and quality meant it would sell, and deserved to. And sure enough, the writer found an agent, only to be told that bullying was sooo<\/em> last year, and the book couldn\u2019t sell to retailers jaded by too many bullying-books in the last few seasons.<\/p>\n

    Likewise, a really strong answer to the second question can overcome some nerves on the first point. I know one writer whose book was pretty mediocre, but she had a great backstory that tied into the themes of the book. She was extremely capable on social media, on TV, with journalists and so on. And in the end, her brilliance at supporting the selling of the book drove that book high, high into the bestseller lists.<\/p>\n

    The looming importance of that second question \u2013 the \u201ccan we sell it?\u201d one \u2013 is, for me, a massive reason why writers have to nail their elevator pitch before they start to write. Mess that up, and you may have a completely competent and well-written book \u2026 that no one will ever buy.<\/p>\n

    For non-fiction writers, the questions are the same, but the types of answer are different.<\/p>\n

    Take Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> by Daniel Kahnemann \u2013 a book about the difference between our slow\/reflective thinking and our fast\/instinctive thinking. The topic is obviously interesting, but maybe a little niche. Suppose, for example, that you are a clinical psychologist of no particular note who just happens to be interested in these topics. And let\u2019s say, you went ahead and wrote the exact book that Kahnemann wrote, but with the first-person stuff suitable modified.<\/p>\n

    Would a publisher have picked that book up? Well, maybe. It\u2019s an interesting topic, for sure. But Kahnemann wasn\u2019t just some random clinical psychologist. He invented the entire field of research. He won a Nobel Prize. He had a decades long partnership with Amos Tversky, who died before the book came out and in whose memory it\u2019s written.<\/p>\n

    In other words, any publisher knew that they could essentially snap their fingers and get media attention from any outlet they wanted. The book still needed to be clear, not unreadable \u2013 you can\u2019t sensibly drive people to buy a terrible book \u2013 but the basic sales job was going to be easy.<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s one kind of answer you can have to the sales question: if you bring clear authority<\/strong>, many of the sales questions are just taken care of. Back in 2020, my sister masterminded the UK\u2019s vaccine procurement programme, with stunning success. That\u2019s clearly an interesting topic. She\u2019s a clear authority. That book will get a ton of media coverage.<\/p>\n

    But authority isn\u2019t the only kind of sales-power you can bring. The other one frequently mentioned is platform<\/strong>. When Pippa Middleton \u2013 Prince William\u2019s newly minted sister-in-law \u2013 brought out a book called Celebrate, no one really thought that she brought any kind of ninja power to the business of planning parties. But who cared? She was hugely famous. She was gossip column gold. She got a huge advance for the book. (And, though UK sales were lacklustre, the book made a profit for the publisher before it was even published: overseas sales were that good.)<\/p>\n

    You don\u2019t have to be near the British royal family to deliver platform. You can be big on social media, you can be a broadcaster \u2013 you can be an anything, so long as large numbers of people know your name. (And, by the way, the numbers in question need to be in six or seven digits. It just doesn\u2019t really make a difference whether you have 100 Twitter followers or 10,000. Those numbers aren\u2019t going to be enough to sway a publisher\u2019s sales decision.)<\/p>\n

    Now all this can be slightly depressing to people who have managed to clatter their way through life without (a) picking up a Nobel Prize or (b) having a major royal for an in-law.<\/p>\n

    But, but, but \u2026<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s just not true that authority and platform are the only routes into effective non-fiction sales, just as you can sell a thriller without being an intelligence officer, or science fiction without being an astronaut.<\/p>\n

    The fact is that if you bring (A) a great elevator pitch and (B) a great writing style, then publishers will want the book. When I wrote This Little Britain<\/em>, a popular history book, I brought absolutely nothing in terms of authority. I don\u2019t even have a history degree. I wasn\u2019t a member of any specialist historical societies. I didn\u2019t bring a particular skill (like military architecture, say) to bear. I brought damn all by way of platform as well. On the two great axes and authority and platform, my score was exactly 0-0.<\/p>\n

    But who cared? I had a great idea. (Roughly: what are the ways in which British history has been exceptional \u2013 unlike the histories of its neighbours?) And I could write with humour and inclusiveness. People didn\u2019t have to feel smart to read the book. They could treat it as a Christmas gift book with a bit more depth and interest.<\/p>\n

    And that was enough. It\u2019s still enough in non-fiction. The same basic principle works in fiction too.<\/p>\n

    Nail the elevator pitch. Write well. And toss in a Nobel Prize, if you have one.<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s it from me. Something REALLY GOOD is happening in May, but I can\u2019t tell you about it, or the Special Ops team at Jericho Writers will have me killed in what looks like an ordinary road accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I don\u2019t always talk enough about non-fiction, which is daft in a way, because plenty of you write it and I\u2019ve always enjoyed doing so myself. So this week: a few thoughts on non-fiction \u2013 which novelists should read as well, as there are some thoughts in here for you too. In particular, there\u2019s are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJericho Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/authority-platform-and-wit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Authority, platform - and wit – Jericho Writers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don\u2019t always talk enough about non-fiction, which is daft in a way, because plenty of you write it and I\u2019ve always enjoyed doing so myself. 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I've published trad & self-pub. Love both. Best known for my Fiona Griffiths crime series. Oh yes, and I'm the capo di tutti capi at Jericho Writers.","url":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/author\/harryjericho\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}