Week Five

This is going to be a short one, because this week there are no set readings, and the book I wanted to quote has disappeared from the library catalogue, and everything else I've been reading isn't really quote worthy!

When writing my query letter for my hypothetical pitch letter, I had to take into account the differences between that and writing one for a fiction book. We discussed in class that:

• Non consumer books/articles etc should be pitched before they are written.
• Research and knowledge of the are/subject should be proven.
• Experience writing about the area/for the type of publication should be proven.

One thing I found easier than writing for a fiction book is that, because I was suggesting a book to be written, not that already had been, I didn't have to know the content inside out to be able to write about it in a few short sentences. With the fiction book, I felt like I needed to know exactly what happened in the book and know my characters well enough, although I hadn't written the book, to then be able to summarise it.

One difficult aspect of the task was thinking of an area that I could justify writing a book about. Also, believably giving examples of experience and qualification to write the book was hard too.

This week, I'm going to be preparing for my presentation. My original idea was to do it on The Bible, as it is one of the biggest selling books in history, and I thought it would be different and interesting However, after researching the development and publications, it's been hard to find concrete figures on the number of different versions, and facts about the publication, as it goes back so far in time. So I think I may have bit off more than I can chew. Therefore, although I'm continuing my research on the different Bibles, I'm going to also continue researching my second idea, before deciding if I have enough research to present on the Bible. 

Week Four - Bestsellers and POD

 In their paper Bestsellers in the British Book Industry 1998–2005, John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge define Bestsellers as 'newly publishes books that sell in large quantities.' (Feather and Woodbridge, 2007). They make a clear comparison between bestsellers and what are known as 'longsellers', titles which are in print for many years, perhaps even for decades or centuries. (Feather and Woodbridge, 2007), but go on to argue that the 'true' bestsellers are in fact these publications, such as Shakespeare or the Bible. 


I would agree that these are the true bestsellers as they continue, after all this time, to sell and achieve commercial success. Feather and Woodbridge say: 'The bestseller lists, which reveal so much about changing taste and about the commercial culture of the trade, consist of recent titles which have been selling strongly since their publication.' (Feather and Woodbridge, 2007). I would argue that a book that has been selling strongly since their publication 200 years ago is more entitled to the label 'bestseller' than one which sells well for a few weeks during a craze or fad, and then gets left on the shelf.


The second reading this week was about Publishing on Demand (POD). Ann Haugland discusses the new technologies in her paper Opening the Gates: Print On-Demand Publishing as Cultural Production. Haugland explains how POD is an advantage for publishers, as it allows them to save content digitally, which allows them to both make copies of out-of-print books, or keep books in print longer. (Haugland, 2006) 


Haugland goes on to explain a new use of POD, publishers that are using the new technologies to publish anybody who wants to. These are subsidy publishers : authors - not the house- bear the costs of publication. (Haugland, 2006). 


Critics have dismissed the new techniques, calling them new versions of vanity presses that have exsisted for years. However Haugland explains that unlike vanity presses, these publishers are connected to legitimate book institutions, such as Books in Print, Amazon and Ingram. This means that the books that are published are available to readers everywhere. (Haugland, 2006). As Haugland says, 'it's big business': the largest of the major houses, AuthorHouse, as of May 2006, have more than 33,000 books in print. (Haugland, 2006). I went to AuthorHouse's website, and found on the homepage:

'When you publish with AuthorHouse UK, your book will be available for order on Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones.com and more than 25,000 retail outlets worldwide.

As the industry leader, we are proud to have helped thousands of authors realise their dreams of publishing and distributing their books. Find out more and get a publishing consultation at no cost!'

As Haugland says, 'In the past few years, thousands and thousands of people whose work would have remained in desk drawers or diaries have made their writing public...POD technologies enable an extraordinary  and interesting new cultural new practice - a form of popular culture centered on production rather than consumption. (Haugland, 2006).

However, although I agree that POD can be a good thing for publishers, as it eliminates risk factors such as whether to take a book out of print or to publish another several thousand of them (Haugland, 2006), I think that it could impact on the quality of books available to readers.

As Haugland says: 'Critics complain that POD publishers are flooding the book field with titles that have gone through no quality check and have no market, written by people whose work is not worthy of publication.'  I agree with this sentiment. If people have decided to self-publish, it makes me think that they have either been rejected by publishers, meaning that their work is not worth publishing, or their either too lazy or think too much of themselves and their work to consider other peoples' opinions, and are simply vanity publishing. For this reason, I think that the new use of POD is simply vanity publishing on a larger scale, and a way for people who would normally have to distribute their books themselves (mainly only to their family or friends), to have their books made a available to much wider audiences.

Sources...

Feather, J., & Woodbridge, H., 2007. "Bestsellers in the British Book Industry 1998-2005" in Publishing Research Quarterly, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 210-223, New York: Springer

Haugland, A., 2006. "Opening the gates: Print on-demand publishing as cultural production" in Publishing Research Quarterly, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 3-16, New York: Springer

http://www.authorhouse.co.uk/

Week Three - Query Letter.

Writing a query letter in a week has been a huge challenge. Trying to summarise a book I haven't written and know absolutely nothing about, but pretending that I do in 250 words, is quite trickier than I thought it would be. To make the task even harder, there seems to be a LOT of complicated rules on how to, or indeed not to, write the perfect query letter. 


I figured the best place to start was too Google 'query letter' and go from there. I came across countless websites with 'how to' and 'how not to' guides to writing query letters. The problem is, most of them contradict each other. I came across a couple of useful websites however, including http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com, which gives examples of successful query letters, with comments from the agents who received them. Also, courtesy of Jen, I read http://www.jmtohline.com, a blog about the answers of agents to the question 'What is the single biggest mistake writers make when querying you?'  and also Slush Pile Hell, a blog written by a literary agent with examples of failed query letters sent to him.


From what I've read, the biggest mistakes writers make when querying agents are:

•  Being over-confident/arrogant about their work.
• On the other hand, not being confident enough.
• Not taking the time to research the agent and what he/she represents.
• Sending a mass produced query letter to agents, not addressing the agent personally.

After reading several examples of successful letters, it is clear that the best query letters are:

• Short, concise and to the point.
• Set the tone of the book.
• Give a teaser of the story to get the attention of the agent and make them want to read more.
• Credentials to prove that the writer has the ability to write a good book.  

If I ever did write a book and want to publish it, seeing how what an agent has to deal with and how the respond to bad query letters, I would probably end up spending more time trying to perfect those 250 words than I did writing the novel. 

Week Two - Audience

This week we looked at knowing your market, and knowing how and why to sell your writing. I found the reading about womens' magazines particularly interesting, as I find a lot of my books from the suggestions in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and More. 


The task this week was to write a 250 piece about 'glasses' for any publication of our choice. I chose to write a piece for Cosmopolitan...

Geek or chic?

For years, people have been taunted and ridiculed for being forced to wear glasses, a less than fashionable but necessary aid in, well…seeing things. It started in the school playground and didn’t get much better as we got older.  The one absolute must, apart from the bow tie, in the stereotypical ‘geek’ themed fancy dress costume, is the big, thick rimmed glasses. But recently, with the rise of the geek chic, it seems glasses are no longer needed in just fancy dress, and rather just in, well…dress. After years of the fashion conscious secretly wearing contacts and some even going as far as to get laser eye surgery, so desperate they were to not have to wear the dreaded specs, it seems glasses have made an amazing comeback…or should that be come forward, seeing as they were never here in the first place? Suddenly everywhere you turn there is a girl, or boy, walking down the street in a pair of skinny jeans, big thick cardigan and big thick glasses to match…the bigger, the better. With celebrities such as Lady Ga Ga, David Beckham and even Madonna getting involved, it seems that glasses are no longer a sign of the geek; in fact, you’re a geek if you’re not strutting around behind bottle bottom thick lenses. So there you have it, it’s time to get rid of your contacts, dust off your abandoned specs, and embrace the geek inside you, waiting to get back out.

I decided to write for Cosmopolitan as it is a magazine that I buy and read regularly, and therefore I know the audience and also what to expect from the magazine. The idea for the article actually came from looking through an issue of Cosmo, as there were several advertisements for designer glasses among the fashion pages, along with pictures of celebrities embracing the geek chic style. I chose to make the piece about fashion, as fashion is clearly a big part of Cosmo, with around 50 pages dedicated solely to it in each issue, and the audience for the magazine are women aged approximately between 18 and 40, most of whom are interested in fashion to some degree.

It is a lighthearted article, designed to fill a space and entertain the audience, who could arguably be said to be either impulse buyers -just picking the magazine up during a shopping trip, or to read on the train, or have a specific interest in fashion and buying the magazine every month, or somewhere in the middle of the two. I wrote the article thinking of what I like to read, and therefore wrote it as a piece about fashion for people who like to read about it, but don't take it too seriously.

The lifespan for the article is obviously a month, as that is how often the magazine is published. The magazines stay on the shelf if not sold until the new issue comes and replaces them. 

I think the article would work well in Cosmo, as it is written in a casual, but not too casual, register, and ties in with other items that would be found in the publication.