News
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How We Work Together
10 Jun 2014
In the second in a daily series novelist and historian Nicholas Best writes of how he works with the agency.
Only bad authors are completely certain of their talent. Good ones know that they misfire occasionally, especially if they’re trying something different. The first of many publishing obstacles is to get your new idea or manuscript past Andrew. If you can do that, you can be reasonably sure that he will manage to sell it somewhere in the end.
The next task is to draft a business proposal in sales and marketing language. It’s the bit I hate the most. My first publisher was a wonderful old boy who had published George Orwell in his youth. He had no time for sales and marketing proposals. He acted on instinct and hunch. I have never had a better publisher.
Nowadays, unfortunately, corporate executives need to cover their backs. If a book flops, it has to be everyone’s fault, not just theirs. That means a business proposal carefully crafted under Andrew’s guidance, something that the suits can circulate and discuss at acquisition meetings before arriving at a committee decision. Hunch and instinct no longer count for much, which is why there have been no George Orwells recently.
If the corporates go for it, you need Andrew to negotiate the terms, unless you know what percentage to ask for in a back-end split. All too often, they won’t go for it because they can’t see enough profit to cover their overheads. In that case, you can go round them now and publish on Amazon instead. A greatly reduced price online means that you can shift a lot more ‘demand-weighted units’ (Amazon-speak for books) at a much higher royalty.
I have recently reissued several of my out-of-print books on Amazon with Andrew’s help. I have been in the Amazon Top 100 for both fiction and non-fiction. My novella Point Lenana, too short to be published conventionally, was Kindle Singles’ No 1 fiction promotion at the end of May. None of that would have happened if I had been trying to do it without an agent.
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Rachel Kelly interview in the Sunday Independent
10 Jun 2014
Rachel Kelly was interviewed last weekend in Ireland’s biggest newspaper, the Sunday Independent.
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How We Work Together
09 Jun 2014
Every relationship between an author and agent is different depending on the needs of the author and type of book. In the first of a series for the website, ghost writer and novelist Lynne Barrett-Lee describes how she works with the agency.
Lynne Barrett-Lee
Those that know me well will also know that I am not much of a sports fan; I’m been known to ask which football team is wearing which ‘outfit’, which will probably tell you all you need to know on that subject. But there is no denying that sportspeople do give great quote. So while it’s self-evident that ‘talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships’ I make no apology for quoting basketball legend Michael Jordan in pointing it out again.
It’s easy, as a writer, to feel you’re the proverbial lone wolf. (And, by extension, as ghostwriters, perhaps ones that howl at the moon, too). We blather on about being outsiders often enough, don’t we? We’re also frequently found whining about the solitary nature of our calling, and are often to be found milking the whole ‘I suffer for my art!’ line for everything it’s worth. (And, yes, that screamer is definitely staying put.)
The truth is, however, that once we make the key leap from being unpublished to published, we need to become team players almost by default. Though the world always loves a good came-out-of-nowhere-to-dash-off-a-bestseller story, experience has shown me it’s a long game and a considered one. That it’s almost always a combination of the factors mentioned above that makes for a sustainable career.
Which, for me, equals having both a brilliant, perceptive agent and, by extension (because a brilliant agent opens those all-important doors) finding oneself in the company of great editors. Those crucial elements - not forgetting the whole publishing team behind them - that will translate the talent bit into sufficient commercial success that you can keep doing the thing you love doing best.
In my case – and I am a ghostwriter these days, for the most part – that sense of teamwork is integral to my working life. In the first place, Andrew does the stuff that, being a flibberty-jibberty author-woman, I neither want, nor are able, to do myself. And I’m not just talking about finding his way round a twenty page publishing contract either.
Everyone knows that a good agent takes care of business, allowing us delicate flowers to avoid the stress of trying to quantify our worth, but in the six years Andrew has represented both me and some twenty three books, and counting, his input has been so much more diverse than that. He is a fresh pair of eyes, a mine of market information, a champion of our right to have reasonable expectations and a mover and shaker par excellence.
And though I’m not sure this constitutes ‘best practice’ for either of our circadian rhythms, he almost always responds to emails as soon as they’re sent, whatever-o’clock it might happen to be, seven days out of seven, and however much rambling, self-absorbed sturm and drang they might contain. Is there any greater quality an author would want in an agent? I doubt it.
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Mandy Smith interviewed on Ireland:AM
09 Jun 2014
Mandy Smith’s interview with Irish breakfast TV show Ireland:AM is now available online.
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Black Rainbow is no 1 in Times Bookshop
07 Jun 2014
Rachel Kelly’s memoir Black Rainbow is no 1 in the Times Bookshop best-sellers today.
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Manuel Arriaga reaches Poland
05 Jun 2014
There’s a good review for Manuel Arriaga’s Rebooting Democracy in the Krytyka Polityczna.
‘Don’t you feel sometimes that there is something wrong with contemporary democracy? That politicians are like a separate caste which makes decisions over the heads of people? Why is this happening? In Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen’s Guide to Reinventing Politics, Manuel Arriaga answers these questions in a straightforward manner, carefully explaining point-by-point how it is possible that those we elect so often fail to represent us. This short book prompted in me to the issues which I had never thought of before.’ Krytyka Polityczna
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Joyce Mackenzie profiled in Evening Telegraph
04 Jun 2014
Novelist Joyce Mackenzie was profiled this weekend in the Evening Telegraph. Joyce’s second novel A Bride for Sunil was published recently by Thistle.
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Andrew Lownie judges Guardian competition
04 Jun 2014
Andrew was one of the judges for the Guardian’s new Self-published Book of the Month competition. The winner, Dinosaurs and Prime Numbers by Tom Moran, was announced today, and reviewed in the Guardian.
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Russell Brand discusses Manuel Arriaga
04 Jun 2014
Russell Brand has been discussing Manuel Arriaga’s fascinating new political study Rebooting Democracy in two of his most recent ‘Trews’ podcasts.
Rebooting Democracy was released last month by Thistle Publishing.
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Another serial for Cabin Fever
04 Jun 2014
Cabin Fever was serialised in the Sunday Sun this weekend, and continues to generate huge attention.
