What will publishers want? ... and should I care?

Well first thing is - you want to write. Don't let anything stop you. Especially - this is so, so important - don't think that being able to write is something that needs permission. 

It doesn't need anyone on a high stool telling you you're a writer. AFFIRMATION it's called, and you shouldn't sit there waiting for it. Whoever you think you need your affirmation from, you don't. If you've got the time and you want to work at improving, nothing else should matter.

That's not to say that you shouldn't be tough on yourself. You should. That's the best person to be tough on you. But you're writing with the aim of creating worthwhile writing. (I'm avoiding the word 'good' - everyone has their own 'good'). 

All you can do is take responsibility for putting something meaningful and well-crafted out into the world. The rest is a different thing, and don't get bogged down worrying about it.

Having said that, if you're trying to write a novel, it's worth having a think about what publishers are - and what they aren't - and why you shouldn't see them as gods on high-stools. But why you might be able to learn something from what they do. You may find there's space in your plan to tweak some things in their direction ... and one day, hey. They are after all, the people who make most of the money out of the business of books.

Before we do that, here's a task for you:

Imagine these two poles of the novel spectrum:

1. A novel that is word for word identical to, say, Harry Potter - except maybe the names are changed so it's Bagrid and Wumbledore. Otherwise - it's identical. 
2. A novel that is so bizarrely unique that there's no library knows where to put it. Different to every other novel in the world. Maybe different to the point of incomprehensibility. 

Okay, now you've got those poles on the end of a long ruler. The next task is this:

• Imagine you're setting up a stall in a busy market. And to save your life you have to sell copies of a book to every fifth person who walks past you. 

Now. Go back to your spectrum. What kind of books do you want at the market place?

There's perhaps a really narrow set of books that you'd want to risk your life on selling. Even allowing a little for the quirks of genre anyone in that position would want the same.

You'd want the 'same but different', as the old saying goes. You'd want to be able to say "this is the new Carrie/Hunger Games/Harry Potter" and for that to be absolutely true. But with added surprise and enough difference to delight.

So publishers and agents. They're going to that marketplace. They want a pretty specific range of same but different stuff to do what they do best - sell. And they are SELLERs, salespeople, business people. 

They're not people who understand literature in peculiarly deep ways. They're not there to have their souls moved. They're not there to tell you that your writing is 'good.' They're there to grab things that can go to market, things that will work the crowd in predictable ways. They want there to be the least fuss and the least input between the manuscript and the product. 

They can't create lightening in bottles. If any of them knew what they secret was they'd be doing it again and we'd have another Harry Potter on our hands.

It's not about 'good'. If you are hoping for publication, don't beat yourself up over tweaking your prose to some unattainable standard.

Publishers and agents accept good books and bad books and plenty of indifferent books. Some of the them make a fortune, some of them vanish swiftly. Most barely cover the involvement of the team. The odd success makes up for the masses that had a punt and went no-where.

They aren't arbiters of taste and they're not looking for great literary gems - although all things being equal they'd like them, of course. They would reject almost all the now famous classics outright - Moby Dick's too long, Ulysses too weird, Hunchback of Notre Dame too dull.

But they know what they're doing. They know how 'good' relates to their real purpose, 'sales.' 

Have a look through the agency and publisher wish-lists. In any given year all of them are saying - "what I really want to find is..." and of course they've seen the statistics, they've read about what's selling. One year it's really want Middle Grade school based wizard fantasy and the next it's gritty social realism. It just depends what trend has just been passing through.  They all want that same but different of all the ones that made the money six months ago and that are still yielding some juice.

(Of course the really smart ones are looking for next year's same but differents... but that's a lot trickier and there are a lot fewer of them.)

So. Don't start writing with a need to please a publisher directly. They shouldn't be your gods.

BUT

Have a think about their job. Have a think about what they want to take to market. 

Then have a think about the scale you made. Where will your next book be on that scale? 

Because by thinking what a publisher wants, you're also thinking about what a reader might want. 

If you want to write the next Harry Potter and it's almost identical just with yourself in the lead - or if you want to write the word of weird so it's unclassifiable - this isn't going to be easy for readers to understand what there will be for them to enjoy. 

It's risky to go outside that narrow area that publishers have already marked out for themselves. But you can, if that's where your heart is. Or... maybe after a bit of thought, that slot where the publishers are isn't such a bad place to be.

If this has made you wonder if you should adapt what you're writing next, maybe have a think about genre, and ask what genre can do for you.

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