Book Marketing And McNabb's Theory Of Multitouch

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I clearly want to tell the world about A Decent Bomber. This is perfectly natural, it's my latest book and took two years to write, in all. It's taken a lot to get it 'right'. A little shouting from the rooftops is therefore perfectly in order.

I would dearly like people to buy it, read it and - ideally - enjoy it. And then I would like them to pester their friends to buy it, read it and enjoy it. By repeating this process, a number of happy people will, in turn, make me happy. It's a virtuous cycle.

There is, however, a large, green-skinned and particularly gnarly troll-thing in the way. Book Marketing.

How do you get people to buy books? It's a problem I don't have a single, elegant solution to. This has surprised me a little, because marketing and communications are very much a part of the day job, so you'd have thought I'd have some clue. And I don't. Any more than publishing companies do. And, believe me, they're pretty much utterly clueless. It used to be nice and easy, but their world has changed. The seasonal catalogues and sales reps thing is no longer the force it once was. I'd shed a tear for 'em, but you know how it is...

Over the years, I have come to realise that books aren't sold with a single 'touch'. Rarely do we see a review of a book and go 'Gosh, I really must have that book right now!' In fact, I can trace the immediate results of reviews reflected directly in my Amazon sales the day they 'break' and I can assure you positive reviews in national media or on popular book review websites result in not one direct book sale. Dittoes for interviews. As for 'book blog tours' I shudder at the very thought of the device, let alone would I consider undertaking one. Like promoting books on writer's sites, it's the blind screaming at the blind.

So all is lost, then? Well, not quite. It's not that reviews are useless per se. They're part of the wider picture. A reader sees a good review, then hears about that same book from a friend, gets caught by another mention of the book and then, ideally, either is persuaded to click on a link or views the book in a physical location. That could be a bookshop or another book-buying opportunity such as an author event - a signing or some such. I have come to believe that three to five 'touches' are needed, ideally one having some form of call to action, before a book sale takes place. I have often said, the last 'touch' should ideally be from me in your ear as you're standing in a bookshop wondering what to do next.

This is not easy to accomplish. Believe me, I've thought about ways you could do it and, reluctantly, drawn a blank. A halfway house would be ensuring that I 'feed' that positive review back into my marketing channels. What you may find depressing is that if you are in any way connected with me, you have just become a 'marketing channel'. So if I haven't stolen your runaway nasal hair or braying laugh to use in one of my characters, I've abused you at the marketing end of the process. One way or another, if you know me, I'm going to use you. And the fact I have not lost one wink of sleep over this tells you what an irredeemable shit this whole book writing thing has made me become.

So, existentialist angst apart, how do you scream 'buy my book!' at someone five times without them punching you?

That's the million dollar question. Clearly, I've been following a 'content strategy' in building awareness of A Decent Bomber. I've done this to a degree with all four books, although Olives got far more attention, including a 'blog of the book'. While this was enormously time consuming, it did have an impact on overall awareness and therefore a smaller but discernible impact on sales. The amount of effort invested vs returns in terms of sales was ridiculous, one aspect of occupying a small market where scale doesn't really count. And McNabb's Law of Clicks applies, depressingly.

So we have reviews out with reviewers (the first one's already in, in fact: "The plot is complex. You must pay attention. You will reap a lot of enjoyment if you do. This is a great story... I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Most readers will jump on the thrill train and get the ride of their lives. In this genre, who could ask for anything more?") and posts about the book and its 'book hooks' (Bombs, the IRA, things Irish, new terror vs old terror. That kind of thing) have been appearing here on the blog. Occasional reminders have gone out to the mailing list and we're building up towards launch. Blog posts get pimped across to Facebook and Google+, Twitter is, as always, a great link-pointing machine.

We are, in short, ticking all the boxes, using a content-led approach to gain your permission to witter at you and wear you down until you resignedly pop off to Amazon and click on that A Decent Bomber pre-order link. Once that pre-order date is past, the book has to generate buzz and recommendation from people - it has, in short, to stand on its own two feet.

What amazes me, to be honest, is how I've found the energy to do all this again. It's Sisyphean, it really is. But found it I have and as a consequence you, you poor thing, are being subjected to new levels of outrageous book pluggery...

The link's here. You know what you have to do...

Emirates Airline Festival Of Literature 2016

I not only have this book, but have cooked from it. I hope you're duly impressed...

The LitFest unveiled its 2016 line-up of authors yesterday in a cosy and yet, well, lavish event at the Intercontinental Festival City - the 'home' of the Festival.

There were pass-around canapés. A lot of them. Little deep-fried balls of seafood, cones of houmous and muhammara (an odd nod to the influence of Thomas Keller and his French Laundry), wee bowls of noodles and stacks of tapenade. Pairs of sushi on diddy plates with tiny plastic pipettes of soy sauce. It was all a long way from the usual starving in a remote garret scratching away with a quill and the last of one's home-made ink, I can tell you.

There were mocktails with names like The Grape of Wrath, White Tang and The Wonderful Blizzard of Oz. They weren't half bad, either. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble here and it showed.

The speeches were mercifully short. The unveiling was nicely done, a musical piece by students from Dubai College performed as a sand artist artisted sandily. The list was duly unveiled. It's a pretty stellar lot. Anthony Beevor, James Waterson, Justin Marozzi and John Julius Norwich alone will make any history buff explode in glee. Dom Joly is coming, which is nice as long as he's not going to spend all his time here cooking up an AA Gill. So's the chap behind Bob the Builder (What do you call Bob the Builder when he retires? Bob) and Korky Paul, who as eny fule no is the chap behind Winnie the Witch.

Ian Rankin's on, too. I interviewed him the other day on Dubai Eye Radio. Scottish fellow. As Festival Director Isobel took to the stage, I remembered how during one ad break on that occasion I had been screaming 'Luddites!' at her and my fellow guests/hosts in a spirited exchange about the merits of books vs Kindles. She was remarkably gracious about it, all things considered. Victoria Hislop's coming. I only know of her because my sister in law is a devotee and will be dead jealous. There are a lot more Arab authors this year - and more Emiratis, including Noura Khoori, Sultan Faisal Al Rumaithi, Shaima Al Marzooqi, Sultan Al Ameemi, Lulwah Al Mansouri and, of course, Maytha Al Khayat and Noura Noman. And that's a very good thing indeed. I have made no secret of the fact I think the festival has been a major catalyst for the burgeoning literary scene here in the UAE.

You know where all this is leading, of course. I'm there as well.

I wasn't going to go this year. I was feeling too weary. But Rachel Hamilton and Annabel Kantaria (both of whom are on the list, natch) made me do an about turn and clamber back on the bus. So I'm doing a couple of sessions and will, in fact, launch Birdkill at the Festival. I've wanted to publish a book at the festival for years now (2016 will be its eighth year, can you believe it? I'm feeling very old) but have never managed it. Birdkill, coming as it did out of the blue, means I've got a 'spring book' in hand.

So there we have it. In the meantime, if you're wondering about where to pre-order your copy of A Decent Bomber, the link's here.

:)

MENA. Online. Literature. Today.

Well, the day after tomorrow, actually.

This two day event - a day of conference and a day of workshops - is taking place at the Townhouse Gallery Rawabet Space in Cairo on the 17th and 18th January 2015 and features panel sessions, talks, discussions and workshops which will set out to examine and illustrate the current state of publishing in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Some may recall, the event was postponed from last December because of a localised outbreak of demonstratin'...

The conference is being organised by Townhouse's Dina Kafafi and is an initiative of the Digital Resource Library in collaboration with Townhouse, the International Media Network Services for Human Rights, Sweden and the Goethe-Institut, Cairo. So you'd better eat your greens.

The speakers are a stellar lot, including The Goethe-Institut's Stefan Winkler, Kotobi.com's Ashraf Maklad, Al Arabi Publishing's Sherif Bakr, joined by a number of prominent and interesting writers and publishers, educationalists, cultural organisations and social activists.

And, you guessed it, I've infested the agenda, too. I'm doing a bit of moderatin', a bit of talkin' (mainly about how the Middle East publishing market is struggling, a little bit about how we're finding new freedoms thanks to t'Internet and some more about how the UAE is seeing a transformation in its literary and publishing scene) and also giving a two-hour workshop on self-publishing tools and how to get your work into shape and into print.

I must say I'm excited to be going back to Cairo. It's been years and years since I was last there and yet I used to run an office in Garden City and travel as constantly as I later did to Jordan. I have always had a powerful love hate relationship with the city but never find my time there anything less than fascinating.

There's no entrance fee for the conference or associated workshops: you can just rock up with empty pockets. Registration starts from 9am Saturday and the event starts at 10am. There's coffee and stuff.

If you just want to pitch for the self publishing workshop, it's at 1pm on Sunday. At 3pm there's a demonstration of the Narcissus.me publishing and distribution tool set for Arabic writers and Mohamed Altaher is giving a workshop on online security tools at 5pm.

There's a Facebook page, linked here for your Facebooking pleasure.

And, finally, there's a map. It's here:

Cairo? Not.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I guess I was asking for it, posting this. Cairo's not happening, the team at The Townhouse have postponed the event until January.

Why? This here slice of madness.

Pal Mai told me the Salafist Kickoff was going to happen, so I got in touch with conference organiser Dina and we changed my flight to the morning so's I'd get in before the Friday mosques emptied and it all went batshit. But it turns out that wasn't enough.

It looks like downtown's going to be a mess of barricades from Thursday night and the increasingly frenetic tone of what's expected to go down on Friday meant that not only were overseas and local speakers looking at how they were going to make it safely to the venue, but whether there'd be an audience there waiting for them if they did.

In fact, anyone with any sense in downtown and even wider afield will be sat at home watching endless re-runs of 'Friends' or whatever boiled grey dross MBC's doling out rather than venturing into the streets.

So that's it. Game over. Watch this space for some Cairo-inspired fuss in January. I was looking forward to seeing the city again, catching up with friends and doing the Conference Thang.

Next year...

Emirates LitFest 2015 Author Lineup Shock Horror

They've been and gone and done it. Last night in a glittering gala event with thousands of sizzling gypsies, the LitFest gang announced the 2015 lineup of authors who'll be workshopping, talking, panel sessioning and generally bringing books, poetry and literature in general to life.

I will, as usual, be infesting the event. The full list of authors is here, so I'm not going to attempt to list them here or pick favourites, but I will point out that Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is my top name of the whole wild and wacky bunch.

One of the things I've been tasked with at the MENA.Online.Literature.Today conference in Cairo (Did I mention I'm going to Cairo?) is talking about the LitFest and its impact on literature and publishing in the UAE and that'll be a sheer pleasure. I've made no secret of the fact I think the Festival has been transformational and has been responsible for the creation of a growing community of writers and people who think they can actually make something of the book they thought they had in them.

It's an important event, as well as a highly anticipated, lively and, well, jolly one. So now you know, block the 3-7 March and save up for the sessions you'll be attending.

I'm thinking of hiring a signing line this year. I've had enough of the sitting by yourself next to a chattering excited stream of people clutching someone else's books as they wait to have it scrawled on by the smiling, relaxed person sat next to me. Last year it was Lynda LaPlante. The press of punters stretched to infinity. I tried to get my queue to shuffle around and look longer, but they got fed up with me shouting at them and the man left while the young couple realised they were in the wrong line...

Book Post: When The Olives Weep

I've written a screenplay based on Olives - A Violent Romance. I have to tell you, it was a great deal of fun and a most fascinating exercise. And the first thing I did was give it the title I should have - if there were anything between my ears other than kapok - given the book in the first place - When The Olives Weep.

It all started when I gave a talk to the DIFC book club last year. They meet in that most hallowed of haunts for the city's self-proclaimed CIPs, the Capital Club. Apart from having a pleasant evening, I was struck by one of the members who reported on his experiences reading 'Screenwriting for dummies'. It sounded interesting and I made a mental note to get the book myself one of the days and see what it was all about.

This from a man who spent seven years refusing to read books on writing before he had to be bullied into it. You can see I've learned stuff, can't you?

I went one better. I bought and read Syd Field's (in)famous Screenplay: The Foundations Of Screenwriting. And I spent a lot of time on the Internet sucking up everything I could about writing screenplays.

There are some odd conventions to scripts. The first and most wonderful is that a page of 12 point Courier text laid out in the standard margins of screenplays equates to a minute on celluloid. Not that they use celluloid any more, but you know what I mean. It's an immutable rule of film and the rules and conventions of formatting are even more rigid than publishing. Indents need to be precisely standard, new scenes treated this way, dialogue that. Looking at a blank Word doc and all that convention, you'd be forgiven for throwing up your hands then and there. Which is where Celtx comes in. Celtx is screenwriting software and it's simply brilliant. Mind-numbingly, it's freeware - such a polished and useful piece of software being offered for nada is stunning.

Celtx does the formatting for you and lots of other useful things, leaving you to focus on the actual, you know, story.

The first thing you notice is how the two ways of telling the same narrative differ so monumentally. In a book, you're setting up the scene, building a sense of place and grounding the reader in the characters' Point Of View, carefully describing things and actions and pacing exposition, dialogue and action.

In screenplay, that's pretty much the job of the director and actors. You're straight in there, keeping it crisp and description down to a minimum. Most of what you have to get across is straight action or dialogue. Scenes keep the action moving, you move to a new room it's a new scene. Move out of the house to the garden, new scene. It's got to flow, dialogue is critical and much of the dialogue in your book doesn't matter. In fact, whole scenes don't matter. Loads of them. You're paring down the story to its bare minimum - if it doesn't move the story forward, it goes. Nuance and subtlety are kept, but they work in different ways - they're the actor's job to communicate through your dialogue. It's on screen - you really don't want to listen to characters pontificating about the meaning of life. Oh no, you want stuff actually, you know, happening.

Now you'd think you'd have done that anyway, writing a well-rounded novel, no? But there's so much description, scenes setting up characters that can go when you have visual cues to play with. Then there are different ways of telling the story - I told more of Lynch's 'backstory' in the screenplay, showed some of the 'behind the scenes' stuff Olives infers but doesn't actually tell. A couple of scenes equals a whole load of shortcuts that mean lumps of book stuff can go. Because the visual medium is in many ways more powerful, different ways it has to be said. I'm not putting one above the other. But Olives the book is 260 pages of full text and the screenplay is 120 pages of tightly formatted, mostly dialogue, 12 point Courier - for a nice, standard two-hour film.

It was a real eye-opener, in some ways a chance to rewrite Olives as a faster, more urgent story than the realistic, leisurely novel I set out to write - in some ways a way of testing how you write and what you can, despite your conviction you've gone as far as you're comfortable, still tear out of the bodywork and engine and leave a functioning vehicle that's faster and lighter.

Strangely, When The Olives Weep fits neatly into Field's structure (he's been blamed with creating a formula so powerful that all Hollywood films are cookie cut from the same convention) with no tweaking. It establishes in the right places, kicks off in the right places and resolves in the right places - all out of the box, I hadn't intended it to fit so neatly. It's just that Olives does that anyway.  It's all a bit pacier than the book - and I can see how authors get upset at how Hollywood mangles their books. At least I did all my own mangling!

I now have not the faintest clue to do with the resulting work and it's sitting in a desk drawer until I work out what the hell you do with a screenplay. But it's a rollicking read, I can tell you that much!

Guest Book Post: Bubblecow On Show - Don't Tell

There’s a critical problem dooming your book and you may not even realize!

At BubbleCow, we’ve edited more than 800 books. That’s a lot of books! One thing that this unique level of editing allows is for us to see beyond the problems with any single book and look at the wider picture.

That’s how we know that many writers face a problem that they don’t even understand exists.

The problem is… Emotion!

To be more precise, the problem is making your readers feel REAL emotion.

We are not talking about readers feeling emotion for a character, along the lines of ‘Oh, how sad that they died’, but your words and story triggering a true emotion in a reader.

I know this all sounds wishy washy, but stick with me.

I am sure you’ve read a book that made you cry! Think about it. I am betting that if a book has made you cry that you can still remember that book to this day. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can still recall the exact moment you were reading that book, as tears rolled down your cheeks.

That’s the writer triggering true emotion. That’s the writer delving into your heart and ripping out feelings that leave you emotionally altered…. Now that’s writing!

If you are writing from a third person perspective (that is when the narrator is separate from the story and not one of the characters in your book, that’s first person), then you probably face a problem that you’ve never considered.

Writers become so consumed by TELLING the story, that they forget that the reader is actually part of the process. The reader is part of the story. They are not a passive observer; they are an active component in the process. The moment your reader becomes passive, they turn off, get bored and, eventually, stop reading.

If you TELL a reader that a character is sad, all you do is add a twist to the plot. What you don’t do is make the reader feel the sadness of your character.

This is important. There’s a world of difference between a reader knowing the character is sad and FEELING the character’s sadness.

What you must do, if you are to trigger emotion in a reader, is SHOW them how the character is reacting and then let the reader fill in the gaps.

If… you write with emotional honesty and with a universal truth, the character’s actions will trigger an emotion in the reader. On feeling this emotion, the reader is immediately engaged with your work on a new level.

In other words, by SHOWING not TELLING you are creating a narrative space between the reader and the characters. Because you are not telling the reader how to think and feel this leaves a narrative gap. The reader then leans into this gap and fills it with their own emotion.
Ok… These are big words, but let me show you an example.

Let’s imagine a scene where a young boy has just opened a birthday present to find a book he has been asking for all year.

Here’s the scene written with TELL:


John lifted the present from the table. His heart was filled with joy. He was happy to see the brightly colored wrapping paper. He pushed his finger into the paper and ripped a tiny hole. He was excited. He peeked inside, his heart racing with anticipation. Unable to control himself he ripped open the paper to find the book he had been dreaming of reading.


OK, not Shakespeare but you get my drift.

Now let’s look a little closer at what I’ve written. In the second sentence, we TELL the reader that John’s heart was ‘filled with joy’. In the next sentence, we TELL the reader he was ‘happy’. In the fifth sentence, we TELL the reader he was ‘excited’ and in the next, that his ‘heart was racing’.
This is a lot of TELL and leaves no space between John and the reader. In this section we are being told by the writer how John is feeling. We are not allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Now… here’s the same scene with all the TELL removed and replaced by SHOW:

John lifted the present from the table. It was a small package wrapped in red and blue wrapping paper, the colors creating a smooth swirl under his fingers. A smile crept onto his lips as he brushed the paper. He glanced from the present to his mother, his grin spreading to a smile. He held the present at arms length for a moment, his hand shaking. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, small breaths pushing from his lips.

The boy returned his gaze to the present. He removed his left hand and extended his middle finger into a poke. His head moved forward, his expression now one of concentration. His finger pushed at the paper, ripping a tiny hole. He leaned in even further, peering into the darkness.

A slight squeal slipped from his lips, an explosion of a smile on his face. Holding the present with his right hand, he ripped at the paper with his left. Long strips came away and were discarded to the floor. A small brown book sat in his right hand. John brushed the cover with the tips of the fingers on his left hand. He stood motionless for a moment, his eyes glistening with moisture. He looked at his mother and mouthed the words ‘thank you’.


The first thing to notice is that the scene is longer. The reason is that the moment we can no longer short cut by simply TELLING the reader what is happening, we are forced to add in description. This is what I call ‘crafting’. I have tried to conjure an image in your mind. If I am not going to write ‘John opened the present’, then I need to accept that I need more words.

The second thing of note is that I’ve tried to write with an emotional truth. I’ve tried to remember what it felt like to receive a present as a child. I’ve also plumbed my own memories of my own children receiving presents. The result, I hope, is a scene that has a universal truth. If I have managed to access this truth, this scene should trigger an emotion in the reader.

Finally, I’ve created a space between John and the reader. I’ve not TOLD you how John is feeling, I’ve just described his actions. It is left to the reader to interpret these actions. This is where I hope to trigger the emotion in the reader. As the reader fills the gap they are forced to tap into their own feelings of the joy of receiving a present. If I’ve managed it, then this suddenly turns into a powerful scene.

And that’s Show, Don’t Tell in action.

I feel strongly that this single technique can turn the most pedestrian of books into an engaging work that readers will remember. No, let’s scrub that. I know that this is true. I’ve seen it happen time and again. In fact, I’ve based our whole business on it! At BubbleCow, Show, Don’t Tell, is the backbone of the editorial approach we take to books written in third person. In fact, we feel it is so important, that we have created a free book to help teach writers how to use this technique in their own writing.

Let’s finish with a little writing trick that can work wonders. It’s called the ‘camera technique’. When writing a scene, imagine you are observing the scene through a camera. Now, just write what the cameraman can see. No thoughts, no short cuts, just the action. The result will be a scene packed full of SHOW and devoid of TELL.


Gary Smailes is the owner of BubbleCow, a company that helps self-publishing writers to produce publishable books. They provide book editing and proofreading.

Huffington Post Reviews Blog Shock Horror

When I hammered the best (IMHO) bits of the first two years of this blog into a book for a self-publishing workshop thingy I was giving over at Dubai's uber-funky hangout The Archive, the last thing I thought was that it would aspire to the lofty heights of a review in the Huffington Post.

Well, it has. You can read that very review here.

When you've finished, you can buy the book here for your Kindle or here for your iPad or other tablet. The good news is that it'll cost you the brave sum of $0.99...

The Umbrella Series At The Archive

The Umbrella Series - four workshops on the creation and distribution of words - takes place at The Archive on Wednesdays throughout February. They're being held by The Archive in conjunction with The Emirates Literary Group, with the intention of providing information and guidance for budding writers on the process of collating words into complete works, how to create books out of them (either through the 'traditional' process or self publishing) and how to sell and distribute them. With that in mind, the four workshops feature a known idiot, a poet and the head of a book distribution and sales company.

The idea is that attendees will walk away from these with a reasonable basic understanding of the whole process that will stand them in good stead as they undertake their own journey to publication. It's the workshop I wish I'd had being held in a funky work/art-space around the corner from me as I started out myself.

By the way, in doing these I'm not claiming I'm Stephen King or that I am anything other than a marginal, self-published writer selling handfuls of books. I'm just sharing some of the lessons I learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Each workshop session will last a couple of hours and take place from 6-pm. Attendance is free, but The Archive would appreciate if you register to guarantee a place.

How to write a book 
Alexander McNabb
February 6th
I'll be looking at the miraculous process of arranging 26 letters variously into 100,000 words and how you go about doing that without wasting time, effort and money. We'll look at things like plotting, dialogue, structure and editing.

How to write poetry 
Frank Dullaghan
February 13th
Published and widely respected poet Frank Dullaghan will be guiding attendees through the world of poetry - looking at different poetic forms and styles and how to use language to create evocation, to bring rhythm and metre together on the page so the words create an emotional experience for the reader. He'll also be looking at finding outlets for your poetry.

Routes to publication (How to find an agent or self publish your book) 
Alexander McNabb
February 20th
Luigi Bonomi gave an excellent - and popular - workshop at the Emirates LitFest last year and will be repeating it this year. He is a top London literary agent and a very nice chap indeed and his excellent advice is well worth heeding. So do book for that session, but feel free to come along to this one as well. I'll be giving an author's-eye view of the agenting and publishing process, from how to format your manuscript through creating a stellar synopsis, blistering blurb and killer query. I'll also be looking at how you can chuck all that up and do it yourself, from picking platforms through to getting reviews and promoting your work.

Book distribution and sales in the UAE 
Narain Jashanmal
February 27th
If you want to understand how publishing 'ticks', who better to talk to than an industry 'insider'? It's amazing how many of us set out to put 100,000 words on paper without ever thinking about what's actually going to happen to them at the end of the process. Narain Jashanmal is GM of Jashanmal Books and will take you on a roller coaster ride through the worlds of distribution, sales and retail. What do the public want? How do they get it? What makes people buy (and not buy!) books? What can you do to maximise your chances of success and give his sales team a nice, easy job when it comes to actually getting your books out there into peoples' hands? And where is publishing going - and where should we as writers be going as a result?

So there you have it - a series of what promise to be enjoyable evenings for anyone interested in writing and publishing as we embark on the run-up to the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature - the link will take you to my sessions at the LitFest. :)

For the Umbrella Series Workshops, please let Librarian Sarah Malki know which sessions you'd like to attend. You can drop her a mail at sarah@thearchive.ae or phone The Archive on 04 349 4033. If you want its location, pop over to www.thearchive.ae or this post if you want to find out more about The Archive.

Submitting Your Novel To Agents

Submission
Going down, down, dragging her own
Submission
I can't tell you what I found
The Sex Pistols

Calm down, now. This is a book writing post, not a music one.

Submitting to literary agents is all part and parcel of the wonderful world of writing books. Having received something like 250 rejections, I think I've got quite good at it over the years. The process is obviously of interest to a great many people in the UAE, certainly judging by Luigi Bonomi's two sell-out sessions on getting an agent at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, as well as the audience questions during our 'First Fictions' panel session.

In fact, I'm still getting questions from people, so here's a potted guide. The usual caveats - I'm just giving my own views here and I'm not necessarily the best person in the world to give advice to anyone about anything, but here it is anyway.

What agents ask for

• The first 50 pages of your book printed single sided in Times 12 point, double spaced with a 0.5cm paragraph indent, not hardbound (ie slide bound or even held together with an elastic band). Each page should include the page number and the title of the novel and name of the author.
• A synopsis, no more than two pages
• A covering letter
• An SAE

What Internet savvy agents ask for

• An email with a query, synopsis and first ten pages in the body of the email, no attachments.

or

• An email with the first three chapters and synopsis as attachments.

I would generally approach any agent via email first and had actively started avoiding 'postal submisions only' agents by the time I signed with my agent.

What you need
A novel
A synopsis
A blurb
A query letter
An SAE
An international postal coupon
An Internet connection
A thick skin and a good dollop of self belief

A novel
Ideally, you should have a whole novel. Some people tell me Luigi suggested you might like to write just the first three chaps and submit to see how it goes, but I can't see that working. If an agent comes back in response to your 'partial' and asks for a 'full' you're just going to muff it by trying to write a book in a couple of weeks. Getting those 'first three' chapters into top condition requires, IMHO, the experience and editing knowledge you'll gain from writing a book.

You need around about the first fifty pages of your novel, ideally ending somewhere sensible, so if that takes 46 or 52 pages, never mind. Check them for stupid mistakes, read them out loud as if you're giving a reading to a book club and correct the text. Print it out and go through it with a red pen. Ideally, upload it to a Kindle and edit it again. Then leave it for a few days and edit it on screen. It.must.contain.no.error.

A synopsis
Distil your novel down to a few pages, then print it out. Tell that story from scratch, doing your best to make it compelling, colourful and yet true to the movement of the plot. Do not lace it with 'in character' dialogue or phrases, keep it a straightforward piece of storytelling that clearly shows the KEY elements of your plot and story as a readable, flowing document. Now cut it. You should end up with it cut down to two pages.

A blurb
Imagine you're writing the dust jacket of your book. Write it up just like that, to focus on the key 'hooks' your book has to offer. Make the language compelling. Again, read it out. Imagine it as tweets - cut out any word you don't need in there. Make it elegant. Make me, the reader, want it.

A query letter
Agents like you to play it straight and don't award marks for individuality, humour or in-character stunts. There are lots of examples of query letters on the interwebs, but the best approach is to get straight in there with a two-paragraph (max)description of your book, (Olives is a stranger abroad story set in Jordan, where journalist Paul Stokes falls love as he finds himself caught up in a series of explosions that seem linked to him) followed by a short description the target market for the book, a bit about who you are (which ideally is in some way relevant to the topic/content of your book) and a signoff. You're looking at a page, max a page and a half.


An SAE
Increasingly, agents are taking email submissions which saves a load of wasted time, paper and money. It'll cost you about dhs60 to send a wodge of 50 pages of novel and an international reply paid coupon (together with an envelope addressed to yourself which will eventually contain the photocopied rejection slip) so it's no small beer once you get above ten agents. So I would definitely query agents that take email submissions first.

Which agents to approach?
You can go through the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook for agents - try and do it intelligently and find people who represent books similar in theme, genre or essence to yours. Here's a useful free listing, but it's a wee bit out of date now and I'd buy into the W&A thing, honestly.

Look at their websites
Agents will ALWAYS have submission guidelines on their websites and you should follow these. Don't waste time and energy putting together a package that doesn't meet the guidelines of each agent, because they'll just bin submissions that don't comply. Don't forget, agents get anything up to fifty brown envelopes full of hope every single day.

Use white envelopes.

If an agent's guidelines seem unusually onerous or ridiculous move on. Don't kill yourself jumping through hoops, there are plenty other agents in the sea.

Many agents will respond to a well-written query by email (use your blurb as the core of this) and many will accept an online submission from the UAE based on that query - do try this before posting off packages, each 'yes' you win will save you the price of a copy of Olives to gift a member of your grateful family.

Don't follow up
It can take three months for an agent to respond to a submission package. Do NOT phone them to chase your submission. They don't know who the hell you are, you're just another parcel on the great big pile in reception. Your rejection will come in time, don't worry.

When you get rejected
If you get a rejection with any feedback in it, count your lucky stars. This marks you as unusual and you should take it as a huge positive sign. Take the feedback on board and resubmit - including to the agent who gave you the feedback. Don't be in a hurry to do this, take your time - and make sure you've really taken that feedback to heart.

When you get a 'full' request
A full read means an agent has enough interest in your work to spend time and/or money on your work - they'll likely have 'readers' who charge a fee to read work and give an editorial report on it. This report will not be shared with you, although you might get a couple of lines of final feedback with the 'no'.

However, you might also get a 'yes'. This is, believe me, a very good moment. Savour it, roll it around in your mouth, then swallow gratefully. It's not the end of the process, your agent's got to find a publisher and that's a whole new ballgame. But you're pretty much through the gate and standing, blinking, in the inner keep...

Must Use Bigger Elephants

I'm over in Australia today rabbiting away about my remarkable tally of rejections from the British publishing industry on Ozzie Sci-Fi writer Patty Jansen's brilliantly titled blog, Must Use Bigger Elephants.

It's all part of Patty's 'Blog Tour', a brilliant scheme writers have evolved to share space on each others' blogs and therefore give each other access to their readers for a day. I've guest posted on a number of other writers' blogs (and gladly hosted them on this one), mostly because of the international community of writers I've stayed in touch with since we all met on Harper Collins' Authonomy website.  Few us still visit Authonomy, but a great number of us still stay in touch.

It's interesting, Authonomy could well turn out to have had a demonstrably important and wide-ranging effect on writing and fiction that was completely unintended by its founders. And one not entirely in their interests, as many of us have thrown up our hands at the publishing industry and gone it alone. Tools like blog tours give writers access to global audiences as well as giving readers access to new writers. And of course self-publishing means you can reach global audiences far more easily than all the printing, shipping, distributing and stocking involve in 'traditional' publishing.

So do please be my guest and pop over to MUBE and have a root around and perhaps, if you're into science fiction, take a look at Patty's work. Don't forget to behave well while you're there and wipe your feet before going in...