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Dear UK publishers, I've been doing lots of 1 hour mentoring slots with Black writers over the last few weeks and here are some things that have come up again and again for you to think about:
1) Many of these mentees have no idea how publishing works. It is a mystery from the outside. What is a literary agent and why bother? What is an acquisition meeting? What do publishers do? Who chooses the editor? What do sales and marketing do? It feels like....
an easy solution would be to do better PR on ourselves as an industry and throw open the doors a bit more, and explain exactly what goes into making a book and who does what?
2) I have been asked repeatedly if the industry is racist. And I have never lied about it. Imagine having to say yes, there is a lot of racism in my industry to a lot of people wanting to write a book.
3) Another common thing I've been asked is, 'should I bother with this idea or should I write about race? It feels like you have to write about race to get published...' This is an issue. Obviously it should be better communicated that people should write the story they want to.
Just some stuff to think about. Hope it's of use. There's some more I'll add to this thread later.
In fact, should I do some zooms over the next month, one with two lit agents, one with two editors and one with a publicist and a marketing person, to give writers an insight into the behind the scenes process, and people wanting to explore career paths deeper understanding
A few other things that have come up in these sessions:
4) Externally, the word synopsis means to a lot of writers, the nuts and bolts plot beats 'then this happens then this happens then this happens' of a book, rather than the story, tone, etc etc. How can we better communicate how to write these?
5) Pay. What is an advance? How are royalties worked out? How many books get sold on average? How much per book goes to writer/publisher/retailer? What else writers do to earn money aside from writing books?
All these are very easily explained, I think. But rather than people doing 1-2-1 explainer sessions, how can all this information be better communicated to writers?
And if you think all this stuff is open and transparent and obvious and easily findable, please take it from me and the people I've spoken to... it's not.
One step towards our industry being more inclusive is to throw the doors open more and not assume everyone on the outside knows how it works.
That's it from me.
That's it from me.
Off the back of this, if you can share with me a brilliant online guide to writing your fiction book synopsis and a brilliant guide to pulling together a non-fiction proposal that i can share with writers, that'd be amazing.
