So last week was the last of the course organised publishing seminars and our guests were John Seaton and Martin Toseland who between them have over 35 years of publishing experience.
John Seaton as a freelance literary agent focused on the author side of publishing, stressing the importance of a good, long-lasting author editor relationship. Keep your authors happy or they will walk. He also talked about self-publishing and how important it is becoming now that agents themselves are often not accepting unsolicited manuscripts, instead heading to the net to find the next big thing. But it isn't all E L James as John told us a story of a friend who found her book sales suffer when she was picked up by a publisher. Low ebook prices got the blame as the publisher raised the price. It all comes down to someone really championing the book. Without someone, be they publisher or author, really supporting the book and shouting about it, it won't make it.
Martin Toseland has worked with backlist management at Faber and Canongate so he told us about how you manage a backlist and the importance of print on demand. Publishers can now keep books with small but steady sales in print whereas before they would be lost, along with what little income they bring in. This also stops obscure classics being lost and means they can be kept on reading lists around the country. One thing that is a problem sometimes though is a sudden increase in sales on a backlist title but no explanation as to why. Without knowing why the sales patterns have changed it's hard for publishers to react properly. And with backlist work there is a lot of risk and again it comes down to championing a title to keep it in print.
So the overall message was be enthusiastic and fight for the books you want to see in print be they your own writing or books you don't want to see go out of print (although this isn't the end anymore as POD means that works out of copyright can be brought back as backlist titles, even if it's by a different publisher).
John Seaton as a freelance literary agent focused on the author side of publishing, stressing the importance of a good, long-lasting author editor relationship. Keep your authors happy or they will walk. He also talked about self-publishing and how important it is becoming now that agents themselves are often not accepting unsolicited manuscripts, instead heading to the net to find the next big thing. But it isn't all E L James as John told us a story of a friend who found her book sales suffer when she was picked up by a publisher. Low ebook prices got the blame as the publisher raised the price. It all comes down to someone really championing the book. Without someone, be they publisher or author, really supporting the book and shouting about it, it won't make it.
Martin Toseland has worked with backlist management at Faber and Canongate so he told us about how you manage a backlist and the importance of print on demand. Publishers can now keep books with small but steady sales in print whereas before they would be lost, along with what little income they bring in. This also stops obscure classics being lost and means they can be kept on reading lists around the country. One thing that is a problem sometimes though is a sudden increase in sales on a backlist title but no explanation as to why. Without knowing why the sales patterns have changed it's hard for publishers to react properly. And with backlist work there is a lot of risk and again it comes down to championing a title to keep it in print.
So the overall message was be enthusiastic and fight for the books you want to see in print be they your own writing or books you don't want to see go out of print (although this isn't the end anymore as POD means that works out of copyright can be brought back as backlist titles, even if it's by a different publisher).
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