Preserving lemons and study aids

Someone receiving this letter has (I bet) written a book about canning tomatoes and preserving lemons. If so, that book is currently dancing its way up the Amazon’s bestseller charts right now.

If you happen to be a publisher that’s big on children’s study aids, you’ll already have sold out and be reprinting pretty much every text you have. Some of those reprint orders (in the US) are for a million-plus number of copies.

Fiction is having a surge as well. Why not catch up on your TBR pile now? Seems like a good time to get stuck in.

The book category that has most taken a ding is adult non-fiction, in categories unrelated to the current crisis. (Which you need to interpret broadly. Books on creating and tending a garden in a limited space have sold out. My children and I always plant potatoes and various other vegetables at this time of year. When we came to order seeds and seedlings, we found that our normal suppliers were completely out of stock. Dammit.)

But all this leaves plenty of questions.

If you have a manuscript that’s ready to go, is now a brilliant time to query agents? Or a really terrible one?

Well, committed as we are to delivering the very best and very latest in news and information from Planet Author, we are happy to tell you that the answer is …

Nobody knows.

Publishing is one of those industries that can move easily to remote working, in theory – but there’s a lot of difference between theory and adjusting to the actual practice of it. An acquisition committee might be able to meet perfectly well on Zoom, for example, but they’re not used to it. It’s not how things have generally been done.

That’s one thing, which suggests the industry will be more cautious. But there’s another which says it has to act as usual. Acquisition committees will be buying books now for publication in 12-18 months and for mass market release perhaps nine months after that. So the market these books will be launching into will be (presumably) a post-covid one. If publishers denude their pipelines now, they’ll be looking naked in 2021/22.

So that says that publishers will, for the most part, be looking to acquire and process as normal.

My own guess, in fact, is that publishers will struggle to release a full catalogue of books over the next six months, so some titles will get kicked down the road. That will mean that acquisitions now can be squeezed a little without discomfort.

And agents?

Well, agents will presumably be working from home, but that’s where plenty of agents work from already. Bigger agencies can easily work remotely. Not much change there.

Except – kids.

I’ve got four children at home when I expected them to be at school. Not just that, but the school, in the nicest possible way, is constantly bombarding us with home learning material. (Which of these 3-D shapes roll? Let’s take a look at this list of Tricky Words. Can you make a box with six oranges in it? You can have two oranges in that half and four in that half. Or … And don’t get me started on the Biff & Chip books for early readers. ’What is that?’ says Biff. ‘It’s a giant axe,’ says Dad. ‘But why do you have that terrifying glint in your eye?’ says Biff. ‘And why are you all spattered in red? And where is Chip?’ …)

In short, agents may have more time than usual, but they most likely have less. And they still have to manage the affairs of their existing clients, which are probably more than normally turbulent.

So I’m going to guess that somewhat fewer queries are going to be read and processed than normal. I’m also going to guess that new acquisitions by publishers are going to thin out a bit. Not much, but a bit.

And yes, you do see some publishers on Twitter defiantly hanging out their “We’re open” messages. But I’m sceptical, as are others. In the words of Liz McKean, a US agent, “I know editors, on Twitter at least, are all like We’re reading! We’re buying! Agents, send us books! And that’s great! I love it. There are some editors, possibly those without kids at home, who may have more time to read. I love that, too! But while they might be enthusiastic and excited to read, they don’t have room on their lists to buy 10 more books than usual. Each imprint’s list is not going to expand. It might not necessarily contract, but it’s not like an editor is going to be able to buy six more books a year just because we don’t have to ride the subway to work right now.“

As for what kinds of books agents and editors are acquiring – well, those acquisitions will largely ignore the current pandemic.

Yes, if you are a public health expert and have something urgent to say, and if you can bash out a book in four weeks, people are going to be jumping on that text immediately. But the market post-covid? No one knows. Will people want lots of pandemic books? Or upbeat books, that mix tears, laughter and an uplifting message? Or will people just settle back into murder stories and psych thrillers and gentle romances, just like always?

Because no one knows, there will be a spread of answers and you’ll see authors / agents / publishers placing their bets all around the great Roulette Table of Fiction.

And, unless you are a very output and business-focused indie author, you don’t care anyway. You write from passion, and a deep understanding of your genre, and the market is what the market will be. That’s the bit you can’t predict or control anyway, so there’s not too much point in trying. You write from your heart.

One other prognostication before we leave.

Crises don’t reshape an industry. They accelerate trends that were happening anyway. Since you can’t now walk into a bookstore to buy books, you have to buy them online. Many of those online shoppers will return to bookshops when they can. Some won’t.

Publishers will use the excuse of pandemic to trim their lists and lose some staff, but they won’t fatten their lists and rehire all those staff afterwards.

Author advances will be put under pressure owing to ‘exceptional circumstances’, but you won’t see a rebound once things return to normal.

In all those ways, the crisis of 2020 reflects the banking crisis of 2008. Things that were done in response to emergency just settled into place, the new normal.

That’s not meant to be downbeat, especially. Readers will go on reading. Writers will go on writing. As long as those two things hold true, we writers don’t have to care too much about all the shenanigans in between. We’ll be OK.

The best advice for people on the verge of submitting to agents now? The same as it’s always been. Write a damn good book. Make it as good as you can. Then get it out there.

Good luck. Stay safe. Have fun. Keep writing.

What has been your experience? What are your thoughts? Did you try preserving lemons too? And did you make them too salty like me? Give your views below and let’s all have a Heated Debate.