Submissions are now closed
But good things are ahead – plus, a few reflections
Our submissions window for this year is officially closed. Thank you to everyone who entered. This moment is a great feeling for a publisher – rather like when you’ve just done a weekly shop, put everything away, and can relax knowing you have everything you need to survive for a while in your various cupboards. The only question is, what to cook first…?
Please note: as of 8pm UK time tonight, I believe I have replied to every single submission acknowledging receipt. If you have not received a short acknowledgement email, please get in touch, as something has obviously gone wrong.
(The above photo is of Valley Bridge again, of course. That seems to be the format now, just a nice, recent photo of the ‘Valley area’ that gave my company its name – hope you are enjoying them!)
I had a few complaints about my last blog – ‘Why are you always so negative in these newsletters?’ ‘Why do you always focus on what’s going wrong, not all the good stuff VP does?’ First of all, I’m pleased to report everything I was worried about then is now fixed, or has at least been addressed head-on, with absolute transparency. Myself, Juliette and Lindsey had a three-hour in-person meeting in York yesterday, and got as close to absolute clarity as we could on all going concerns, budgets and systems.
More philosophically, here’s why my newsletters generally slide towards the negative:
When a project is running well, to schedule, and I’m 100% happy with it (as is magically the case with a few of our forthcoming books), I just simply stop thinking about it. It’s hard to write about what you’re not thinking about!
“Happiness writes white ink on a white page,” said French novelist Henry de Montherlant – a sweeping statement, and not true 100% of the time, but he certainly had a point. Day-to-day positives are boring. If I subscribe to a publisher’s newsletter and all they say, all the time, is how wonderful they are and how well they are doing, I ditch them pretty quickly.
A thought experiment: imagine Clark Kent leaves his newspaper job and goes to work for a PR company, who are then hired by the Justice League. Week 1, Clark is asked to write some positive press releases about Superman and all the amazing work he’s doing. Surprisingly, he finds he can do it, no problem; he is the supreme authority on that subject, he knows all Superman’s positives and all his mistakes, but can focus on the positives without feeling awkward – because nobody knows he is Superman. There’s a certain distance. The next week, though: whoops, his secret identity has been leaked to the world! But Clark still has to pay rent, so he comes into the PR agency and is again asked, somewhat more awkwardly, to write some positive stuff about Superman. He has the same information at hand. Not so easy now though, is it? To write your own PR, when everyone knows that’s what you’re doing – even if the name is slightly different – not for anyone with a modicum of shame…
(Not that I’m comparing myself to Clark Kent of course, or Valley Press to Superman. My glasses are much more stylish!)
That third point is why I’ve never entered Valley Press for the British Book Awards, or ‘Nibbies’. The deadline comes around at the end of January every year, and all I can think about as I stare at the entry form is all the ways I fell short of perfection over the previous 12 months. “Maybe next year,” I say, closing the tab, “when I’ve got everything just the way I want it.”
I was going to ask if that happens to anyone else – but I know it does, that’s why many of you are seeking a publisher in the first place, and why so many of you find it hard to write your own blurbs, or self-promote. You need a third party to “big you up”: and luckily, that much I can usually manage, and I certainly have no problem entering our books for awards – which is all that’s needed, really. Look forward to a string of book-focused posts next on the blog. No shortage of new publications at the moment!
To that end, I have been interviewing John Farquhar, author of I Leant Upon a Copper Pipe – and he has just sent me this amazing rejection letter from November 1979, his very first. I will enclose both the original image, and the extracted text for people reading on their phones:
Dear Mr Farquhar,
I am very sorry to have to give you a negative response to our publishing your work MARTIN SLUMBER, but that is something writers have to get used to. Personally, I thought it was extremely good, in fact, I couldn’t put it down once I started it (to the detriment of all the other work which had to be done). However, higher powers decided that it would be unsuitable for our publication list.
The reasons behind this are purely economic. We have to be sure of selling thousands of copies in order to keep the unit price of a book down to within the consumer’s pocket. We also have to be sure that we are going to get back the money that we have put into producing the book in the first place.
With such a piece of brilliance as yours I am afraid that the market is rather small. People either like it or they don’t, and our editors are not too keen to take that risk at the moment. I do hope that you can find a more adventurous publisher so that the bud won’t be quashed before it can bloom.
Yours sincerely,
A fan in the editorial department
John thought this letter might spark ‘a lively debate’, but I actually think this is a wonderful reply – I’ve had this same experience many times, and the line about “being sure of selling thousands of copies to keep the unit price down [and] to get back the money that we have put into producing the book in the first place” is exactly the same challenge I face with every publication, nearly half a century later. (Not thousands of copies, admittedly: but certainly hundreds.)
I could lift some words from that letter right now and send them to 200 of the submitters in our latest window, and it would be fair and accurate. The one bit I can’t steal is “higher powers decided it would be unsuitable for our publication list” – sigh! I should have a sign over my desk: The book stops here.
Anyway, that’s it for today – back to reading now, and trying not to work too hard on what is, after all, a Sunday evening. I’ll be back in your inboxes soon, perhaps with the rest of that interview.