Top tips for getting your book published! - A HarperFiction Presents Publishing Masterclass

[Music] so welcome everybody and i can see everybody still arriving but this is our hopper fictions presents masterclass this is the first one and it's called a book so what is next um really excited to read this um with our first ever guest uh maddie melbourne uh she is uh from maddie melbourne uh tv and agency and will be introducing herself a little bit in a little bit um firstly i just want to introduce myself so my name is kimberly young i am executive uh publisher of harper fiction and harper fiction comprises of the crime and thriller list the general fiction list the prestigious harper voyager science of history imprint the borough press and the literary estates of jail tolkien and agatha christie i'm also the executive publisher of one more chapter which is a digital first um list i also personally edit a roster of authors i'm not going to name all of them right now um but to name a few there's number one bestsellers uh lucy foley firm britain kimberly chambers and authors that are right right now dorno porter and emma gannon um i'm so happy partly because i get to see her that i'm in the room virtual room with maddie melbourne maddie and i have worked together for a long time but i will let maddie introduce herself and her agency hi everyone it's so great to be here um and amazing to be able to reach out to so many people in this new virtual world that we're in um but yeah i just wanted to um introduce uh the agency um which i'm in at the moment um but yeah i started the madeleine milgan agency back in 2012 and i actually started in a small basement flat in angel um in a cupboard really and i was there for months just working away and actually felt a bit like lockdown but now we've grown into this incredible global agency with this huge reach and we have six primary agents now i'll just go through them quickly because you may think about submitting to them but there's giles milburn who handles historical fiction there's catherine cho who handles more literary fiction and non-fiction haley steed who's at the commercial end of the list and and then we've got alice southern tours who does children's nya and chloe sieger who also does children's and weiner and then there's me and my list is kind of evolving into this literary commercial sweet spot i go for very character driven books and i think the names that you'll be familiar with um or some of you will are gayle honeyman and then there's elizabeth mcneil who does historical fiction and we've got authors such as cj tudor ciel taylor beth murray holly bourne uh so many authors and and i hope you've read read some of them but um it's a real honor to be here to to talk about the whole publishing process and what it is to be an agent and i think that's what you just said maddie is really important that part of the reason we wanted to do hop fiction presents and these master classes and sort of behind the scenes is really to make sure that i as a publisher and and maddie as an agent you know we there's there's no veil between us and and you as a writer you know the reason i get up in the morning is just discover new talent i think that's something that really bonds and publisher and agent and we have very different roles in the process um so we sort of wanted to talk through a little bit firstly about the roles we play some of the questions we often get answered and then as a lot of you signed up a lot of you ask questions so we'll try and cover those off in our general chat um but i do have a list of those questions at the end which we will do our best to cover off we'll be here about 30 to 40 minutes um the chat will then be recorded and put on um the harper fiction presents youtube channel and so you can go and rewatch us if you like um when that is so matty do you just sort of firstly want to explain what a role of an agent is yeah of course um an agent i mean we have so many different hats but um primarily you know first off we are talent spotters and we'll be looking at the market for certain trends but also i mean i look for voice driven fiction and different interesting characters and so it will be finding the talent and then we work so closely with our authors to get them the best publishers not just in the uk but in the us and all the international markets so we're a global agency um and then you know we will make the book um we will create the buzz around the book the manuscript they're about to submit i will carefully select editors in the uk and the us i want to find the perfect match for the author and then i'll submit the manuscript and hopefully get a lot of offers and go to auction and find the best homes and then after that i mean that's really just the beginning of the journey then we'll we'll we're the authors champion with our cheerleader we help them edit their work we brainstorm with them we find them all of the opportunities for their book we want to make sure that it's going to be published in digital in audio we want to option it for film and tv rights we're there to solve problems to navigate the journey with them um so yeah there's so many so many different things and we'll talk more and i think him if you talk about your role and i can expand on my role as well yeah absolutely i think a couple of interesting points that you make there i suppose my role as a publisher and i think as i said before harper fiction is comprised of lots of different imprints on different areas and there are then different editors that specialize and that that specialism is quite an interesting angle and i think a lot of the time when people ask or call us the gatekeepers of this industry i think one of the huge benefits of working with an agent and with both of my hats done as publishers i see both agented material and some of my editors do accept agented material but the big huge benefit of working with an agent is they do understand your tastes and parts i mean maddie you and i have worked together for a long time um you understand what i'm looking for we'll have conversations about some of those trends in the market and for writers out there and i think this is something that came up quite a lot in the questions i'm at the moment and and the publishers and editors i work with are looking for really our programs in 2022 and 23 at the moment because we work with a lot of authors um day-to-day or multi-book contracts of a new talent we're looking for has to fit around the authors and publishing contracts we already have in place because obviously they're our first priority our publishing around those authors um has to come first and then we look to add new voices to the list around that so that's why we work with agents because they help us curate and they help us narrow down what we're looking for depending on our specific specialisms would you say that and i think that's it with with you maddie i suppose you work with several publishers at the same time so how do you decide which editor to send a particular script to um yeah well i think i mean well now we're having zoom calls all the time but we used to have lots of meetings to catch up and you know to hear about their taste and what they're publishing next and what they're looking for so i have an idea when i read a manuscript oh i think that's going to be for this particular editor she's just told me she wants something like that um and we get a get a real sense of of their of their taste and what and what they're after um and yeah i think with editors um it's it's i have a a big list but it's really i submit to kind of a big group of editors um and then it's really interesting to see what the editor's vision is for that particular book so i don't assume that any editor is going to love it more than another i want to see how they connect with the actual writing and how the chemistry is with that author so that's why i like and going to auction and arranging these meetings so they can actually meet the perspective publishing teams and see who really fits with each other so yeah and i think that's a really interesting thing because quite often agents and maddie or your agency is brilliant for doing this you you do work with the author quite often editorially before you connect with an editor but that doesn't mean that the editorial journey is finished so each editor will have a slightly different way they want to connect that material to a particular readership and therefore might want to sort of pull out one element more um so that they can help with what we call the positioning of the book so that might then be um and i can actually see beth mori's book which one of my papa collins do publish it one of uh our brilliant editorial directors mark ashby was the editor and you know it might come up in on with a slightly different title and if you see how that book is packaged in the uk versus the us it shows that those editors and those markets will bring out slightly different elements of the storytelling in in in the way to connect it with a different readership and i think the the edits you then work with on an author and why it's so important that you meet with the author and check that your vision of the book and how that author might take it to the next level is um the same because quite often it might be different you know an editor might have a more commercial bent and an author will feel that their work is more literary or there's so many different permeations and that's why those relationships certainly is an editor and i'd be interested maddie you know we always say we look for a voice and um certainly in in my list we look for authors we can work with for book after book and career you know we want to build brands of the future as well as have great commercial success with a particular book so finding that perfect relationship of an author that you can work with and feel that you can bring their creative best out of them and have an agent that can help you facilitate that that's that's sort of where magic really really happens it really is it's like it's the real magic when you've got the shared vision between the publisher and the author and you know i know from from way back mistakes in my past have been matching up the also with the wrong publisher who has a different vision for the book and it's always been a battle but now you know over the last few years and i think that's how we have these big global successes is because they have you know their match with the right person and we all share this united vision i think as an agent we do editorial work we try i always say we try to guess you know the manuscript comes in at this level the agent will take it to this level the publisher will take it to that level we get it to the level we work structurally work on character we do a lot of cutting and weeding i always think you know some sentences so long and just you can speed up the pace here um we do all that to get it into shape so we can submit simultaneously to the uk the us and international markets um and i think you know if if we didn't do that editorial work i'd probably just submit to a uk editor and then they could work on it and then or maybe have world rights um but we don't like to do it like that we want we want it to be a book that lots of publishers go for at the outset and then they can all launch together i think that's a trade uh trade secret you might be uh giving away there maddie but i think you're absolutely right and i think um just to tell you a little bit about the internal process publishing process and i think why it's so important that um an agent and author do do that level of work is if a script is taken say to me to an acquisition meeting there might be up to 40 people in the room that i have to persuade um with all of the submissions all of the work we've got on for people to read and to support with a financial investment to take that author on board um so if if you sort of say oh look i promise this book's really good but please just wade through the first hundred pages i know there's you know the pace isn't great but it does get better or just wait till the end there's a great twist it doesn't really persuade people to drop their workloads and actually a lot of the reading we do is at night um you probably can hear my dog barking right now the dog will be calling me out to go for a walk um you know it doesn't stop me i've got my kindle here on hand i've got submission to read tonight if i have to wait to 100 pages of something i my dog will probably win out so that's why i think it is so important um it's really about that internal process how we get attention and of course we take on storytellers that need shaping that's that's part that's our job but equally um we need to persuade a team of people that that they need to get on board so sometimes that that amount of work a script does need might might affect the support the initial support you might get in-house from the marketing team from the sales team um you know people want to get inspired to write in your book and that's that's um sorry get inspired to work you know and invest their time in in a book and and that just might change how you can bring it to market and the speed of which um i think that's quite a bit about some of the internal process at least um and i suppose the other question i had maddie on that and the way you and i work together is obviously we bring new talent into the business but is there a difference in how you might work with an a with a writer and i know we've got a lot of new writers um listening this evening but how you might work on an author's first book with them compared to their tenth book what what might the difference be there do you mean editorially or both educatorially on how that role of agent might change between that initial deal and then what you're rolling on the tenth book yeah i think i mean as soon as once once the we're always looking ahead as you are as well um once we've done the first deal i'm already thinking when are we going to do the next deal and it will probably be hopefully around the time they um deliver book two and that's been accepted but so with book two we are working quite closely especially on the idea if it hasn't been fully formed when we're submitting book one so that second book we're brainstorming um and we're going through lots of different versions and the editor will get involved at that stage as well and then um once that's been delivered and accepted we'll be thinking about the new deal um to get the best contract for the third book and we're constantly thinking about kind of shaping that author's career and where where is it going and did the first book work really well in the market and this is all very collaborative with the publisher um if the book has done really badly and and you know never with half connects um if something if something's happening and the the um you know the pairing hasn't been quite right we might look to kind of move to another publisher and kind of re-launch under a different identity or we also might want to change genre but generally what we want to do is grow an author with their publisher and you know book in book out really build the brand together and that is what we aim and that's my my one my big purpose i think is to do that but we're we're always we're there you know every step of every book um that my authors deliver i will read i will give my reaction i think when it's under contract i probably wouldn't go into as much depth editorially because they have their editor who you know it can sometimes clash if there's too many cooks and also you're not just going to have the uk editing we have the us editor as well so they're going to get lots of notes so but i would definitely give it the first read give my reaction if there's something really big that i think needs to be fixed we'll do that before sending it to the editor um but yeah the ads will be ready and waiting for that second or third or fourth book and then they'll start working on a tourney and i i think for me as a publisher and it's really interesting you talk about that collaboration because i think obviously when when times are good um things carry on but actually you know publishing and i think people don't necessarily new writers and you don't necessarily want to talk about the the scale of when things don't work quite often people here is success stories but but generally each publishing career is so different and things can start off in a really small way and an author might only find their feet and their audience on book five or six and that's that's great because if they're slowly growing it could be that they start off well and then actually then it's a it's a real struggle to find a new audience there's so many different career paths and i think as a new writer it's about finding your voice finding the right agent and finding the right editor and sometimes that's not going to work straight away it is a long process um and as we talked about the actual editorial process between submitting you know writing your novel which can take well it can take months it can take years it can take uh a lot of decades um and then finding the agent to taking it to the publisher and then as i said it could take two to three years to publish the book and there are different routes and we do try and publish some books more quickly than others um so i suppose the question out of that i've got for you maddie and the bit that i probably don't know is if i was a writer now so for those writers listening to us now how do they go about finding the right agent to represent their work yeah so it's um it's doing the research i think like really um i i just think the writers an artist yearbook is an excellent resource because it's purely because it's updated every year and there's a lot of stuff online that's actually quite out of date so you've got all the right details you can basically go through each agency look them up look up their website research the agent look up you know follow them on twitter go onto facebook find where they are where they're you know making noise and subscribe to the bookseller i think is a good piece of advice for um seeing which agents are doing the deals at the time and what their that you can find out because everybody announces like the big deals and they can find out their taste from that um so but i think it's just really and looking at the back you know the acknowledgements in in the backs of books in the kind of in the area that you're writing um you can find agent names there but do your research i think that's really key because i think we we get about 80 submissions a day at the moment and some of the submissions that i get i'm just like they're not something that i would be able to represent um and it's such a shame because it's like they're going to feel that they're rejected by me but i'm not rejecting them it's just not my area of expertise they haven't really thought thought carefully enough about what i i don't i do think yeah do do your research i think that's a really really good piece of advice and i certainly even as an editor i look at the deals that being made and which agents might repre you know have a similar uh taste to me and similarly um sometimes i can scare twitter and i know where their editors do and if they see um an agent sign up an author we then quickly go oh that sounds really interesting i'm really looking for historical books at the moment or or some such so i think twitter's a really good um place and as you say the bookseller i think we're we're always looking for new talent and i think that's something that can feel very far away when you're writing a story uh maybe during lockdown or you've just started on the process i can see why you know certainly my my background um i had no idea that you could even be an editor i you know it was really by luck i fell into my editorial journey i started um i thought i was going to be a journalist and uh sort of ended up going to london for a little bit and saw a job at melson boone and i thought oh my god i read you know i used to read mills and boone onto my grandmother's kitchen table and it's like i didn't know you could work you know i didn't know you could edit books and suddenly realize i could get paid to read and it was amazing so i i do understand how daunting it must feel from the outside in and as i said that's part of why and thank you for coming to join me to do this that we want to do this because there are now you know i went to a local library when i was going for my job interview and melson boone didn't have a website there and it was under construction um so now there is there's twitter there's there is a lot of conflicting advice i appreciate that but do you ever do sort of twitter call lights with your agency or that sort of thing what what would happen if someone approached you on twitter like what what what's the best way for them to use twitter in that world yeah we do when there's the ask agent channel that agents get involved with with answering questions and things um i do get some direct uh tweets which i will respond to um but i think generally i mean it's difficult with it's kind of thing with twitter um in terms of actually engaging back and forth i and i i think with most social media accounts sometimes i get a big push and then sometimes i i don't but yeah um it's just keeping an eye so if you're doing a hashtag ask is it hashtag ask agent ask agent yeah i try and do a hashtag ask editor and i know some a lot of editors are fiction do as well but um but you're right when we've started this mentorship that i think we're trying to invite i started the agency i wanted to be really transparent because i remember when i first started out as you know in in in a very old school literary agency beginning of my career they call it the slush file it would be there and nobody read it it was all recommendations word of mouth it was friends of friends and i was so horrified and and i would be the you know the assistant having to stamp the card saying you sorry but your work's rejected and i was like but nobody's read this and i just thought that was so awful um and disappointing so now i mean my whole list has been made from my submissions pile i call it not slush because there's amazing talent in there and that's where i find everything and we are looking so i think really it's important that writers are presenting their work in the best way possible that they're really thinking about their title they're only submitting one manuscript at once like sometimes i get all these attachments with loads of different things and i think i think you know i'm going to be interested in all your work if i love the one book that you're presenting to me just present one um but really honing that pitch showing that there's a really exciting hook to the to the manuscript to the story talking about the actual story rather than just the themes so being very specific being concise about it um and then your author profile it doesn't need to be very long but put that at the towards the end of the submission letter rather than at the beginning because i think we'll be interested in everything about you if we're really interested in the book that you're submitting but i do think i don't know is that the tip just story first and then first yeah that's really interesting um as a publisher so i obviously when i when i see a maddie melbourne you always do a really good teasing email first but when i see a maddie melbourne sort of submission in my inbox i always go straight to the text the first page and then read the submission letter after because i want to know first and foremost whether i can connect with the material but that's because i know you will only send me something that you have really thought about whether that's something that you know might be right for the list or you know we've worked together for a long time and but i love just getting straight into those first few pages which i do think it's it's really interesting you say when someone has committed so much time and energy to writing a book thinking and spending a little bit of that time just thinking about how they presented and especially those first pages of or the first chapter it really surprises me sometimes that people don't put more um of their time and energy into that part of it and so i think that's a really great tip about story first because that's certainly for me if i'm pulled in to those first few pages then i'll go and have a look at the pitch and go okay right i'm i'm gonna try and talk everything now and read this because i love the material um so do you how many submissions you said you were your agency of receiving how many i was saying about 80 a day during lockdown it's really increased but we're all on the submissions account it's a joint account so all the agents then we've got two external readers so if there's anything that we think is going to be you know we're going to take interest in we will make sure that it gets the right person and we'll be we'll be reading but that's the thing in the past i was able to open and read those all those chapters but now i can't read that would be like reading a few manuscripts a day if i so i so i have to be taken by that pitch um and i think saying like the comp titles you've got to have an idea about where your book sits and you know it's even better than those books but you need to choose those authors carefully um and yeah just just don't don't share so many so much work at once research share your your main marriage there's a lot online there's a lot of advice now i think going to the festivals as well the york writing festival winchester um you can meet agents there as well so i think there are a lot of resources available yeah but then there were a few years ago um this this is something i think i get asked a lot and it was in the questions and and we'll come on to the questions we've got about 10 minutes to go so i do want to make sure we cover some of those but um people who have been published before um either self-published or they've been independently published would that be a um a bonus or would it be off-putting to you as an agent no i mean i've relaunched or taken on authors who are self-published i look for self-published authors that are doing well that's that's really attractive to me because you know writers writing you have to hone your craft and it might take three or four books to do that and so getting a writer when they've written four books behind them that's that's brilliant from my point of view yeah and that's what i was going to talk to you kim as well about it is so hard at the moment um launching in traditional with a traditional publisher the market space is really crammed it's jammed there's so many books i was going to ask you how many you publish a month but there are so many um that sometimes the digital route first is is a great way to start with those you know and and quite a few of my authors stay there in that route it's very lucrative so and it's less snobbery about digital now as well i totally agree maddie and i think that's part of my job as a publisher too and why i have the two hats and why i mentioned sort of in my introduction so yes i'm a publisher of the traditional list and oversee the publishing there but also the digital first list and i feel that a job you know taking away my publishing hat but as an editor is figuring out how i can connect the best story with the widest possible readership and sometimes that widest possible readership is in digital it might be an audio it might be in hardcover through waterstones it might be a through a supermarket channel and each writer and each story and each year how you can connect the right story with the widest possible read ship might change and you know at the start of my career my supermarkets had only just started really taking on paperbacks and women's fiction was absolutely flourishing because suddenly people were were buying you know their paperbacks in tesco in a way they weren't before um you know over the last years breaking um debuts through waterstones and and through some of the independent shops has been fantastic the way that they have helped nurture careers um but equally the digital channels you can reach huge volumes of readers so i have never been format um a format snob because for me it's about connecting a story with the widest possible readership and you're right some of those traditional channels and i think especially during lockdown you know it's i massively want to support independence and waterstones and we they've been fantastic during lockdown but of course digital and audio um formats have also really really flourished and i certainly like you say the more people can practice their craft and sometimes that is spending many years on one novel especially possibly at the literary end really thinking about the soul of you as a writer and what you want to write writing um and finding live what readers love about your writing and your storytelling and either working with a publisher um or you know we still have the traditional agent publisher and digital imprint it's fantastic and i think you you can really learn about that through the reader feedback you get and just the practice of writing more and more books um so i'm like you maddie i think whatever you whatever it takes to perfect your writing skills and to reach readers if you can do that in the meantime it's it's brilliant yeah and it also gives you if you i mean if you go into down the self-publishing route it gives you a really kind of real insight into into how to publish and all of the things that work well digital promotions and how amazon works and you know some of my my digitally published authors self-published authors that i now represent are so savvy um and it's such a great partnership because we can really explore each opportunity together and work out what's going to be best for them um but you know if we we have a number of like digitally published authors like fiona velpe for instance with amazon publishing um and she's we've sold her international rights to 20 different traditional publishers so she's published in print in other countries but in the uk and digital but also we've got to remember that digital they've got print on demand and those editions now look very they're almost the same as traditionally published print books and during lockdown people have been ordering them like anything because they wouldn't know that there yeah the first format was digital well we definitely say it's digital first not digital only i think that's um in the one more chapter that's all been our our sort of mantra um so i think we've got um a few minutes left so i've got some really great questions here so i'm just gonna um if you excuse me read my piece of paper um and actually this came up quite a lot but i'm just gonna pick out this one from danny who said how would you advise protecting your work when submitting to agents and or publishers are there any precautions was asked quite a few times i'm assuming people are meaning about copyright protection there and how do you protect would you worry about that as a it's our job to protect your work so i don't think you need to worry when you submit to an agent um because yeah i would definitely say the same with the publisher we are we also work under especially with the gdpr guidelines now we destroy any work any addresses if if we don't um acquire that script um we're long from the days as maddy said where things used to sit and covered for a year um so we are very very protective over ideas and you know it's our profession is is a game to find the talent um and an author an author's works really precious to us so i think yeah you should feel quite safe i think um submitting to both agent and publisher i hope that answers the question it did come up quite a few times and it was in the same way um so um i think this thing came down with about following trends and i know we we picked on this a little bit maddie and as i said and again i think this is where it is interesting now that we've got digital as well as traditional lists that whilst on the traditional list it does take um longer um to maybe get to market uh so we're probably looking at 22 there are some books we might buy now for the end of 21. um but with digital you can get to market quicker but a lot of people especially um around lockdown are saying um you know should they is lockdown going to be a trend like what's the next trend should they write to the trend they think is going on now so what would your advice be i would i mean my author's already asked me do i need to include locked down and covered and everything in my book and should it play a part and i i am actually just saying no i don't think you should i think with non-fiction maybe you know something completely different but with fiction i wouldn't because i think once by the time the book book's published it might feel very dated in in two years time i hope it will feel dated beyond this awful episode um in history but um i in terms of trends it's really hard because i'm always looking for new trends so um you can jump on a trend but you've got to be very quick about it so it's always a deal of timing and i think i mean like the psychological suspense trend has been going on and on and on but it has to be so different and so original but i would really focus more on your character something you know as a character i think for me that sells a book the strength of your character and also maybe doing something different with the genre so i was just going to mention him in the book that the big book that i sold during lockdown was called the maid by a canadian author but that was so different because it was like a blend of eleanor elephant is completely flat fine it had a really quirky protagonist crossed with an agatha christie murder mystery so it was this combination it was like starting and it was uplifting it was all those things those elements um but it really was the voice exact that central character that struck me so i wouldn't pay too much attention to trends i think it um but yeah what would you say i would totally agree and i think exactly what you said i think the maid is such a brilliant example um hob fiction were very lucky in winning that auction fiercely fiercely competed auction but it was exactly that when it came in it felt like and this is when i i have what i call my like publishing tingle which sounds a bit weird but it just felt like something i hadn't read before and it was the same when i first read elena oliphant i could say to everybody can you just please stop what you're doing now you honestly won't have read anything like this book and that is when i think you you get really excited as a publisher because we read and i think again people forget reading for me like a good writer comes from good good reading i read everything and anything whether it's the back of a cereal packet to although i personally mainly acquire fiction i have recently just acquired a non-fiction project but i read non-fiction i read everything newspapers magazines i feel like i have to be a magpie so i understand the world into which i'm publishing these stories into so the maid was really exciting because it felt for me like something i hadn't read before but also it felt quite timeless so whether we were going to publish in 22 um or 21 and actually we are publishing in 2020 see i forget what year i've been that's how far ahead we usually plan um my head's always like two years down down the road so when people sort of say oh i've you know this is the current publishing trend so you're gonna love it that you know i think it can work when you follow fast and your publishing sucks in a certain way but actually what we're really looking for is you know something i've never never feel as i've read before and i love you know i published um lucy foley's book a couple of years ago hunting party or last year um so i really don't know what yeah i mean um and that was it it was just so exciting because it was sort of like a yeah really a new contemporary take on a murder mystery and it just felt it's just really exciting to publish something and that's what i think a storyteller and i think mata you and i um i think maddie were the first agent i ever bought um a book from um and i feel you know when you've got a voice and i believe i actually said that to you and i don't know how many years ago 10 15 years ago that um when you can take a cover off a book and know who's written it then you know you've got a really unique voice and i think when people say what's unique voice mean that's what i feel you know you should be able to really just think god this is unlike anybody i've read um a bit like when you hear a singer you can i think a really true classic singer has such a unique quality to their voice um it's not karaoke and i think that's what i'm always looking for whether you know it's overly descriptive or it's really funny or it's just be just find out what your special quality is and then really go to town on it and put that through as maddie said it's your characters and the story you choose to put them in so for me it doesn't matter whether it's a different world or it's a different time or if it's a different you know crime it's that's that's where i see a unique voice in the story and and how how you create those characters it's so true you can because i i mean we go for similar books definitely because it's but it is it is about that voice you know and i will look at any genre if you and i and i do i fit around from different like from crime and thriller and people oh you're doing crime and thrillers now well no i'm doing historical and then i'm going to contemporary and i'm going to you know it depends on that voice and and it is the character we always remember the characters in with big global blockbuster you know bestsellers you know you remember harry potter you remember romeo and juliet you remember jack richie you remember ellen oliver you remember the character you don't remember the storyline well i don't know you know going way back the story on the plot and all those things and the trend and the genre but you remember those characters so work on that i think make that character that people can relate to and empathize with or i think that's a really really key that's a really great idea and one question i've got here um from from michelle and actually i don't know the answer to this so this is a really good one for me but it says if you're a multi-genre author say thriller non-fiction and children's book as an example is it best to find an agent agency that covers all three genres or can you have would you have a multiple agent within the agency multiplayer well i can't i can't speak for other agencies but here we like to manage a whole the entire author career it's much easier that way you know especially if they're going to be writing adult fiction and y a fiction like poly born for instance she writes both ones published by y a publisher and one fine adult fiction publisher and so um it's much easier that we represent all all the work by an author and here we have got um you know if you're if you want to write middle grade alongside adult fiction we have got a specialist middle grade agent who would help with that but your primary agent would always kind of be the leader um and steer your career and champion you um but then might work with another agent so say for non-fiction or um or children's but we we would definitely want to manage everything yeah yeah and i think you'll write different agencies maybe a slightly different but it depends on the agency and i think it sort of sums up what you were saying about you're there i think to manage someone's career rather than an individual book um yeah and similarly at harpercollins we do split into the adult trade side so adult fiction and that split into fiction and non-fiction um and then a children's side as well and i i definitely primarily publish fiction but occasionally if your fiction author branches into non-fiction you might work with a colleague in the non-fiction team but equally you might publish the book and so dorno porter for example i'm publishing her non-fiction book this autumn which actually is about lockdown and it's a diary of her it's her lockdown diaries um but that was it's very much borne out of her fiction writing and um so it felt very natural for me to publish it this autumn but generally it would go to a non-fiction um editor through that route but i also think i was going to say it's clear you need to be clear about where you want to be launched in the markets and i think it's important to start in one area of the market and then once you're established in that area with that particular genre or then you can kind of branch out and we're there to help you manage that but i think it's important to be to really think about what you want to start out as such a huge job you know from publisher agents you know to get your book to market to grow you in that age area it takes it takes years it's not just about the one book and as you were saying earlier kim you know we hear about the one but wonders that the big debut that goes really well we don't hear about all of the other stories um and you know we share ciel taylor she started out with commercial women's fiction did two books in that area with a different publisher and it wasn't until she moved published and moved into psychological suspense domestic suspension after the two or three four books that's when she really started to establish herself um and become a bestseller and all the opportunities would come but it's it's such a long journey um but yeah we're here yeah i have to say that this year for me personally has been particularly special um because a few of my authors have hit number one this year but what's been amazing is dilly court hit number one after uh she's going to be celebrating her 40th book so her 38th and 39th were both bestsellers for the first time in her career which is just extraordinary and the same with firm britain it was on her ninth book we hit number one um which has been really special so it's um it it can be a long long long process but um it's certainly been great great journeys um and many different achievements it's not just about that that sort of sales pinnacle sometimes there's lots of lots of different elements to it and so just before we wrap up maddie are there any sort of tips you would you sort of want to leave um any aspiring writers um um i would say persevere um did i mention that read your manuscript out loud once you've finished it i know it's that sounds like very daunting but it really will help you realize if there are areas that are you know but you want to skim over parts it's probably because the pacing's not quite right but read it out loud share it potentially with one or two people but don't you know it's very subjective the reading experience but um just keep the faith because and um and yeah submit to submit to multiple agents at the same time uh we're all looking we are hungry we're looking for new talent we you know we really are and now that i've really noticed that if there's something that um i won like there's at least like five or six other agents pouncing on it as well so so you're you and agents open to multiple submissions then yeah definitely because it's you need to find the right agent for you you need to have that spark that chemistry you don't want to be afraid of your agent you want it's a friendship it's a marriage you know and i think it will give you the best opportunity um if you do so you can meet them and i'll talk to them on the phone and you can see it's exactly what we do when we go out to publishers so yeah i think that's just hugely good advice because i think when you're sort of sitting on your own writing a novel or you don't think about who has the power in the relationship you think the agent the publisher have all the power and actually the writer your story it does start with you we couldn't do what we we couldn't do what we do without you writing and then submitting the book and i think that's that's brilliant really brilliant advice and probably a very good good place for us to stop although i could chat to you all night so we will be back for another chapter if we can uh persuade you maddie but i really really appreciate your time thank you kim that was great thank you yeah so and just want to say just to reiterate um you know good luck well done writing and you know just make sure you finish the book is my advice and submit it to do your research submit to an agent and then hopefully we'll get to uh yeah share your words with millions millions of readers so thank you for listening this will be on the harper fiction presents youtube channel uh we will be back with more behind the scenes it's really important to us and to connect with as writers as good as authors it really is so thank you maddy thanks for listening to us today good luck everyone [Music] you

Channel: BOOKIT

Views: 2,510

Keywords: books, book, novel, writing, howtowrite, literature, fiction, harpercollins, creativewriting, agent, Madeleine Milburn Agency, bookstore, write, writer, author, authortube, writingtips, writingadvice, toptipsonhowtogetpublished, how to get noticed, publishing, book publishing, how to write a book, tips for new authors, new novels, author talk, new author, author debut, publishing tips, book shop, how to write, starting a book, starting a new book, debut author, top tips, best tips, author help

Id: 9LngS6vOyjw

Length: 46min 32sec (2792 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020