Written by Isobel Dixon
Determination, self-belief, belief in the work itself, and perseverance all round are crucial characteristics for writers. Persevering daily on the creative side, in the writing, editing and development of the craft, and also in managing the logistics of the professional writing life – finding and working with an agent and publishers, on the journey of a creative career. Hopefully a journey with lasting relationships with an agent and your primary publisher, but also navigating the inevitable setbacks, the bumps in the road, the possible cul-de-sacs – the novel that is started that never fully comes to life and needs to be set aside, the book that takes a decade or more to find its champion, the sequence of editors who leave for different jobs, or the publisher that gets bought or goes bust, just when you thought things were beginning to take off.
The aspiring author’s dream checklist: finish that great novel at last; find an excellent agent who loves your work; get a sweet deal (hopefully after a heated auction!); publish, win prizes, sell film rights, be translated into dozens of languages; repeat with many books; go on to enduring fame and fortune. The headlines are tantalising: the latest debut sensation, the Best Young Novelists/Ones to Watch lists, the ‘hot’ London/Frankfurt Book Fair titles, the surprise Booker shortlister, the latest TikTok bestseller…
The reality for most is a slower, longer road, with many twists and turns. Perhaps a swift debut start, with second- or third-book setbacks, or a career gap somewhere en route. A writing hiatus when life interfered, or the book that was once so clear in your mind just refused to take proper shape. Or for others a long, slow burn – book after book just simmering on, till one particular title makes its blazing breakthrough. Not always the story you’d expect to be the one to shine so brightly or find favour – and thus potential fortune – with that year’s particular blend of reviewers, prize judges, booksellers and, of course, readers.
There will always be surprises in the writing and publishing life. It’s part of why I love this job, even as I grind my teeth and curse as another ‘rave rejection’ pops in from an overstretched editor. And when we get asked, ‘What’s the next big thing?’ – well, if only we knew…
Watership Down by Richard Adams was rejected at least seven times before it was published by Rex Collings, Frank Herbert’s Dune turned down by publishers more than twenty times, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time more than twenty-five, Stephen King’s Carrie more than thirty. Moby-Dick, Twilight, Dubliners … the line stretches on, and on. And those are just a sprinkling of the manuscripts that eventually had their happy reversal of fortune: agent and publisher acceptance, followed by triumphant publication and the glorious revenge of success.
In Canadian writer L.M. Montgomery’s memoir The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career, she wrote of finally finishing her first novel, which she typed herself on an old second-hand typewriter ‘that never made the capitals plain and wouldn't print "w" at all’. First she tried ‘a new American firm that had recently come to the front with several "best sellers." I thought I might stand a better chance with a new firm than with an old established one that had already a preferred list of writers. But the new firm very promptly sent it back.’ She then tried one of the ‘old, established firms’, and the manuscript met the same fate. Three ‘betwixt-and-between firms’ sent it back too. Four of her rejections came with a standard printed note, one of them damning with a sprinkling of faint praise. It was that, she wrote, that ‘finished me’. The manuscript – of Anne of Green Gables – was consigned to a hatbox, until she came across it later ‘while rummaging’. It ‘didn’t seem so very bad’, she thought, on turning the pages. So she tried again and the novel was accepted and became a worldwide bestseller, loved by readers of all ages in her lifetime and successive generations too. In South Africa, my mother kept all her carefully collected L.M. Montgomery books in a special lockable bookshelf in her bedroom. I too was glad of Montgomery’s fruitful ‘rummaging’ and persistence.
L.M. Montgomery writes beautifully of the unexpected success of the novel which launched her career and the moving letters of appreciation she received from male and female readers. I smiled though at this wry line, yet another jolt of realism: ‘Well, Anne was accepted; but I had to wait yet another year before the book was published.’ In the long game of publishing, there is indeed a lot of waiting to get through.
For many it takes a long time to find an agent, and then it can take some time again before the right match with a publisher is made. Our agency co-founder, Carole Blake, famously submitted Barbara Erskine’s Lady of Hay to over forty publishers before she received an offer. It became a major international bestseller, sold millions of copies and has been continuously in print since. When the thirtieth anniversary edition of Lady of Hay was published by HarperCollins, Barbara wrote: ‘In so many ways Carole Blake, my much-missed and beloved agent, was as much the author of Lady of Hay as I am. She read my original 1,000 (at least) page manuscript, she spotted its potential, she moved heaven and earth to find a publisher for what was at the time a deeply unfashionable genre and she helped create what became for many people a legend.’
Early in my career I was hugely privileged to work with the late South African author Achmat Dangor. I sold his novel Kafka’s Curse to a discerning young editor, Dawn Davis, at Pantheon in the US, and it was hailed as a New York Times Notable Book on publication in 1999 and translated into six languages. Achmat then embarked on what he described as ‘a bigger book about the New South Africa’, which took some time to write, in between his many duties as head of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. I was amazed by the fierce, lacerating novel when it was delivered. But selling it, to cut a very long publishing story short, also took some time. Bitter Fruit was bought in France, Spain and Canada first, and turned down by more than twenty English editors before Toby Mundy of Atlantic and I had a long conversation over lunch and he decided to take a second look, having passed earlier. The novel – as it does – had continued to haunt him. Bitter Fruit was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004, after publication to many fine reviews. Morgan Entrekin and Amy Hundley came on board for Grove Atlantic in the US and other translation deals followed.
Every experienced agent has represented authors through different publishing journeys, different variations on these tales. Yes, we have the thrilling debut auctions, the consistent book-a-year bestsellers, but all the time, as I type this, and as you read this, the submission-rejection pinball goes on. Someone, somewhere, is rummaging through the proverbial bottom drawer (or hatbox), reassessing a story written long ago that they have had to set aside, but which may yet – usually after some reworking – have its day.
After that first breakthrough into print, reviews (many or few) and the recurring question of ‘the difficult second book’, there are many writers who have experienced some success in one area and along the way have been tempted to tackle a different route entirely, deciding to switch genres. Sometimes this is out of sheer curiosity, a key quality of all the best writers, or sometimes it is the result of specific inspiration, an idea or story that just arrives and takes up residence in the imagination, refusing to depart.
David Gilman came to the agency as a scriptwriter client in the 1990s and was represented by my colleague, now Head of Media, Conrad Williams. Ahead of Frankfurt Book Fair one year, Conrad said David had written an adventure novel for younger readers, would I read it? I did, and I loved it, and sold his Danger Zone trilogy to Puffin for a six-figure pre-empt, also separately in Canada and the US, and in ten other languages. Not content with that shift, David then moved into the world of historical fiction for adults, with his Master of War series featuring the much-loved stonemason-turned-archer-turned-knight Thomas Blackstone. Now David also has his contemporary thriller series The Englishman, starring ex-Foreign Legion fighter, Dan Raglan, racing alongside Blackstone’s Master of War – with a few historical adventure standalones popped in-between. It takes agenting stamina to keep up with some authors too!
The same goes for Peter James, who also made a genre switch that paid off very well. Having had success as a writer of supernatural thrillers, which Orion began to publish in the 1980s, Peter later joined Blake Friedmann as a client of Carole Blake’s and began to write a crime series, a police procedural starring a Brighton-based police detective, Roy Grace. In 2005 Pan Macmillan published Dead Simple, which became a major bestseller, launching a multi-million selling series published in dozens of languages, with some of the books adapted for stage – and now Grace is an ITV crime drama series too, starring John Simm. The drama behind the journey from page to screen (almost twenty years after Dead Simple topped the charts) is another epic tale in its own right.
Edward Carey is the author of another epic book with a modest name, Little. The wry, macabre, haunting tale of the orphan girl who became Madame Tussaud, the novel was a very long time in the making. It was a novel that haunted us both, and wouldn’t let go, yet publisher after publisher said no, to successive edits of the manuscript, on both sides of the Atlantic. A whole lot of rage, disappointment, despair experienced throughout that long process, over fifteen years, by both author and agent. In between, Edward also stepped across genre ‘lines’ (which many of my authors love to do) and wrote The Iremonger Trilogy – Heap House, Foulsham and Lungdon – for younger readers. But also, always, the dogged belief that Little was a book that deserved its readership and would eventually find it. As it did, in the first instance thanks to Edward’s thoughtful reworking and the development of both the text and the beautiful drawings that always accompany his work, and then due to the discernment and care of Jane Aitken and Emily Boyce at Gallic Books, who were the first to offer for English rights, followed by Cal Morgan of Riverhead in the US. Little is now sold in 20 languages, including several English language editions.
More recently, Monique Roffey’s marvellous The Mermaid of Black Conch made literary waves. Published by UK indie Peepal Tree Press, it won the Costa Prize in 2021 and was shortlisted for an astonishing array of other prizes – despite being published right into the first lockdown. Adversity aplenty on this particular journey, but after several brilliant novels and years of dedication, the mermaid delivered Monique the widespread acclaim she deserved, with more than 100,000 copies now sold in the UK, a film deal closed after auction, and a growing list of publishers bringing this beautiful story to readers in other languages and on other shores.
Those are just a few examples then of how as agents we’re in it for the long run, through the ups and the downs, the frustrations as well as the celebrations. I seek to represent authors, not individual projects, with long-term commitment to selling the work of writers I believe in. Being an agent requires a sharp eye for detail – the difference a percentage point makes in a high discount clause, the importance of the escalating levels in royalty rates, the nuance of a sentence, the missing angle in a book’s cover copy – but also the long view. A shared long-range vision for where the author could go, a fierce joint ambition for the work. Sometimes that also means seeing potential in something the author can’t quite see for themselves. That catalysing ‘Have you ever thought of…’ moment, or the happy rummage in the author’s bottom drawer, for the novella they wrote years ago, like Elizabeth Chadwick’s recently published The Coming of the Wolf, or Ann Granger’s collection of mystery stories, Mystery in the Making, comprised of eighteen stories and longer serialisations she wrote for magazines – some of which I sold to Women’s Weekly and others when I first joined the agency as an assistant in 1995! Her introduction to the collection is a delight in itself.
A writing career can be a marathon, hopefully still a rewarding one, in spite of the many frustrations and publishing challenges en route. For the disappointed and exhausted, struggling with writing or publishing dilemmas, keep the faith and keep working. I wish you good champions too. For the aspirant authors out there, first of all you have to sit down and write that book (and often rewrite and rewrite) to be in the running. And while there may be sprints, leaps and spurts when you really get going, be ready for the long road ahead.
And ‘lots of typing’, as an agency client once said about the task of writing a novel. Who knew there’d be so much typing! Blood, sweat and typing, a whole lot of alphabet. But that, as we know, is where the real magic of the whole crazy journey begins.
