Available to pre-order on Amazon now!

Available to pre-order now on Amazon. If you want a funny,  lighthearted read on the beach or on holiday, this is for you or your wife/sister/girlfriend/any other female you might know (and men too of course). And I will, of course, love you forever if you buy it!

Writer Development Day

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go to a Writer's Development Day organised by Literature Works, a charity set up to support and encourage West Country writers. The speakers were Clare Wallace, Head of Rights at Darley Anderson, literary agents to the likes of Lee Childs, Jane Costello, Clare Dowling and Martina Cole,  and popular Women's Fiction author and the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Bath University, Sarah Duncan, writer of five novels, two of which have made the lists for Romantic Novelists Association book of the year.

The idea behind the day was to learn more about how to approach agents, how to pitch your book and just what level of flattery is acceptable when writing a query letter.

Sarah gave some great tips on telling your story and some excellent advice on dos and don'ts; for example, agents don't tend to like books that start off a) talking about the weather b) waking up with a hangover or c) looking in a mirror.

Clare talked about the role of an agent, what they do, how many submissions they get (300 a week) and how to get your book noticed. She also gave advice on writing your query letter, what to say and what not to say. Don't for example tell an agent it will make a good film, or worse still, send them a Hollywood cast list, don't come across as an agressive loony but do include a bar of chocolate - that was a tongue in cheek comment. Don't make a grand gesture, such as one aspiring author did, and leave your manuscript, wrapped in a blanket in a Moses basket on the doorstep of the agency.  It spent a few hours sitting on the step while they tried to decide whether or not to ring the police and the author wasn't signed anyway. They do still have the Moses basket though.

For someone like me, who was lucky enough to be signed by a publisher on my first book, without ever having had to write a query letter, it was invaluable, should I need to find an agent in the future.

We were all asked to bring along the first page of our book, so, having lots of ideas but no firm plans I did a quick Facebook poll on two ideas I had, one for a more serious, literary book and one for another lighthearted, Popular Women's Fiction one in a similar tone to L'Amour Actually. The vote was overwhelmingly for the latter, so I quickly banged out a first page. Everyone present had to vote on their three favourites then Clare and Sarah gave quick feedback on each. I was delighted that my first page was the second most popular of the thirty on offer and Sarah picked it out as one of her three favourites. Now, to write the other 300 pages!

I would highly recommend events like this to other authors. It was a great opportunity to network with other writers and find out more about other opportunities in the local area. I'm so glad that I discovered Literature Works and look forward to more events in the future.

It's all negotiable...

When I was offered a contract to publish L'Amour Actually my immediate reaction, apart from disbelief, was to just sign on the dotted line. I mean, someone wanted to publish my book. How fantastic was that?

But a few well placed words from The Husband made me realise that, like any contract, it was worth looking at it in detail.  I suddenly realised how little (read: absolutely nothing at all) I knew about contracts. Was my contract a good one? What were all these rights and should I keep them or not? What did all these clauses mean?  Would my publishers think me a bit of a diva if I told them I wanted to get it checked out? Surely I should just be glad that they were interested in me. In the end, I spoke to them about it. They were very supportive of my wish to have my contract checked and certainly didn't feel affronted in any way. They did warn me that some things are negotiable but others just aren't. That seemed fair enough.

I belong to a few writing groups so I started off there. And that was when I hit my first barrier. It seemed that people were actually very reluctant to talk about their contracts. In some ways, of course, I completely understand that, but then for me, trying to research them, it wasn't much help.

For a first time writer, the advance, unless you are exceptionally lucky, is unlikely to be enough to afford the services of a lawyer so I needed to look at other avenues. With the help of Mr Google, I found several independents who would take an impartial look at your contract. The cost was around the £100 mark. Not huge but not insignificant either.  I then came across the Society of Authors. As an author in possession of a contract I was entitled to join and one of the services they offer their members is a free contract vetting service. This is in addition to a quarterly magazine and all sorts of other useful information - and I won't pretend that the membership card with my name on wasn't a teeny bit of a draw too. I am so shallow!  And it was a bit cheaper.  It seemed a no-brainer.

So, membership form and subscription duly paid, I sent my contract off to them. They told me I would have it back within a week with their recommendations. It eventually came back two days later along with several fact sheets about various elements of publisher's contracts. It was hugely useful in helping me understand the document that was in front of me.  It is worth remembering though, that their recommendations are sort of 'in an ideal world' and publishing is anything but so it should be used as a bargaining tool, not a mallet to bash your publisher over the head.

I was pleased but not surprised to see that the contract I had been offered was very fair and the changes suggested by the SoA were really quite minor but they enabled me to negotiate  a slightly higher advance and  slightly better royalties. The publisher even threw in a couple of things I hadn't asked for.  One interesting thing that the SoA advised was not to sign away merchandising and film rights. The royalties per book are eye-wateringly low; JK Rowling only gets 90p per book so you can imagine where the average author's royalties are pitched. But there's money in them there merchandising and film hills if you hang on to the rights. That's not to say that selling your book to a film company is easy but there are professionals out there who may be better placed than your publisher. And who wouldn't want to dream of their story on the big screen with Cameron Diaz playing the lead?

If you are fortunate enough to be offered a contract I would say always get it checked by a professional but be realistic. No publisher is going to stake huge sums of money on an unknown author. Ignore press reports of six figure sums for debut novelists; they are definitely the exception rather than the rule and use any contract report as a starting point not the finishing line.

Good luck!


Smug moment!