No One Knows What Will Sell

I am putting the final touches on my new novel (now titled The Girl in the Photo) and am thinking about publishing, promotion, publicity--everything I can do to find readers. I self-published Getting Oriented and plan to do the same with the new book, but I follow the online discussions of the pros and cons of self-publishing versus traditional-publishing.

Recently someone posted the following on a thread I follow: "You've got an amazing, awesome, terrific book. It just needs a little editing and a good cover, and it'll be a hit. So someone says you should self-publish it in hopes of picking up a traditional publisher and getting published. A very common myth, and one many, many debut authors fall for." This provoked a lively and inconclusive debate. As one person wrote, "Today's publishing houses are parasites, not publishing firms. Back in the day,...publishers used to groom and nurture an author. For the past century they have simply latched onto the jugular and sucked the blood out of them to support their friends, family, prostitutes, and drug dealers. The only 'marketing' I've seen them actually do is blowing smoke...."

After more than 200 comments, it was clear that (a) a handful of self-published authors have been picked up by traditional publishers; (b) most of the people who comment on this thread are disgusted with traditional publishers; (c) many people think there is a trick (or a conspiracy) to publishing a best-selling book. I think there is a myth buried in the second sentence of the original post—with a little editing and a good cover your book will be a hit. If it were only that easy.

No one knows what will sell.

Like all generalities, of course, that's overstating the case. There are marquee authors whose books are virtually guaranteed to sell: Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Norah Roberts, Clive Cussler, Janet Evanovich, etc., etc. I'm talking about the unknown writer who has actually written an amazing, awesome, terrific book. Take the recent case of Robert Galbraith, the author ofThe Cuckoo's Calling.

Galbraith, even with a terrific book and an agent's representation, had trouble finding a publisher. Time magazine found one editor who admitted turning it down. The few reviews of The Cuckoo's Calling were positive. Publishers Weekley called it "stellar"; Booklist called it "absorbing"; Library Journal called it "totally engrossing." But in the two months after it had been published here it had sold only 500 copies.

Then the Times of London revealed that "Robert Galbraith" is J.K. Rowling, the book shot to the top of the New York Times best seller list, and the publisher ordered 200,000 more copies printed. 

All this tends to confirm my belief that your book needs a terrific story, excellent writing, careful editing, clean page design, a great cover...and luck to sell well. I am sure that E.L. James never expected her Fifty Shade of Grey to sell as well as it did when she first published it as a print-on-demand book. (One could, I suppose, use that example to show that a terrific story and excellent writing are not always necessary to be a hit.)

My plan is to write the best book I can, self-publish it with a professionally-designed cover, offer it to reviewers and at a cut rate to early buyers, and trust that readers will tell their friends, "You've got to read this."

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowllng

J.K. Rowling is a British author best known for her series of young adult books about a young man with magical powers and an implacable enemy. The Casual Vacancy is her first novel written for an adult audience.

In England, as Rowling's beginning headnote explains a casual vacancy is "deemed to occurred: (a) when a local councillor fails to make his declaration of acceptance of office within the proper time; or...on the day of his death...." The story begins when one of Pagford's councillor's drops dead. The main story is the struggle among some residents of this perfectly charming English village to hold back (as they see it) the forces of drugs, crime, and the chaos from the neighboring town and other residents to bring the village into the 21st century and actually deal with the effects of poverty, unemployment, and addiction.

The book has a huge cast of characters--eight families, most with spouses, some with children and there are relationships of one sort or another among almost all the characters. I did not find one of the adult characters sympathetic. The five children in the novel, four teen-agers and a three-year-old, are mostly put upon rather than unpleasant; the adults are mostly small-minded, addled, or vicious. I did finish the book even though I could not care about any of the characters because I wanted to see what finally happened.

Rowling does a couple of things that most writers cannot get away with: changing point of view within a chapter or on a page and inserting flashbacks set off by parentheses. She does this three times in the last 10 pages of the almost 500-page book. For example:

     They arrived as the hearses appeared at the top of the road and hurried into the graveyard while the pallbearers were shuffling out onto the pavement.
     ("Get away from the window," Colin Wall commanded his son.
     But Fats, who had to live henceforth with the knowledge of his own cowardice, moved forward, trying to prove that he could, at least, take this . . . )"

For another two paragraphs.

I wonder a couple things: Would Little, Brown have published the book if the author were not J.K. Rowling? And: Did the publisher try to edit the book and Rowling refuse the suggestions or did the editor accept it as is on the theory that Rowling's fans won't know or care how well or how poorly it is written or structured?

It's not a bad book. It does give a picture of contemporary small-town English life that seems to this outsider as deeply felt an accurate. It suggests that the lives of English children can be (are?) nasty, brutish, and (in some cases) short. Married couples, even those living comfortably in idyllic little villages, do not have satisfactory sex lives. I found it an unhappy book about unhappy people.