Asking me questions about writing and publishing

One of the weird things that happens when you get agented, then have a book out, is that you become a Published Author, a person who shows up in Google results with 'Public figure' next to your name (extremely weird to me, still). I'm not at the 'has a Wikipedia page' level yet, but five years ago I was Just Some Guy with a few blog posts and social media posts to my name.

I'm still Just Some Guy, but I now show up in searches for authors and appear on podcasts and generally am visible in a way I wasn't back then. And with visibility comes questions.

It was quite shocking to me how quickly the number of messages I got from readers and novice writers outstripped my ability to manage it. Because, as noted, I am a debut author and very new to all this myself. After a few weeks I ended up adding a list of 'questions I probably can't/won't answer' to my contact page, which has helped a lot, but I still get a fair few queries each month.

To be clear, these have all been incredibly polite and phrased not as demands or with any assumption that I exist just to answer questions. Some of my fellow authors, particularly the female-presenting ones, do not benefit from this kind of default politeness (please, if you're approaching ANY author, be polite and respectful and be prepared for the answer to be 'no', for the reasons below among many others).

However, I, as an individual human, do not scale.

Don't get me wrong. One-to-many communication is awesome. It's the one-to-one that I struggle with.

I really quite like sharing information and talking about my experiences (with due caveats about the advantages I have). I've done series on my writing process. I talk about publishing a lot. I've talked about how I got an agent, my experiences at events and at this point have a whole bunch of podcasts and video interviews where you can listen to me talking at length about all of the above.

A common factor in the messages I receive is an assumption (sometimes implicit, sometimes directly stated) that I'm holding things back from my public, one-to-many posts and podcasts and interviews, and that a one-to-one conversation or email chain or quick coffee is where I'll spill the beans, hand over the key to publishing and agree to read your book.

To be clear, not everyone who gets in touch is asking me for some, all or even any of these things. But a few do. But the truth is, I can't spill the beans, hand over the keys, or read your book.

Why I can't give you the key to publishing

The short answer is that I can't give you the key that unlocks trade publishing because it doesn't exist. What I can tell you to do is to write a really good book, follow the steps and process to find an agent, then cross your fingers and hope it works out. There are some things that might improve your chances, like doing some paid-for, selective writing courses that give you access to very good instructors and agents. I've seen enough people do that that I can't deny it can have an impact.

But I didn't do that. I wrote a bunch of books and then finally got my shit together enough to edit one of them properly, then I cold-queried agents and, fifty-six queries and several months later, I managed to sign with an amazing agent. But I'd never met Harry before he signed me, I didn't schmooze at any festivals or conferences and I certainly didn't have to live in London (I did live in London years ago, but I moved home in 2010).

Could I have got an agent earlier? Maybe. Back in the days when people had to post their queries I think there was a little less competition, but also my first few novels were really not very good. And I, personally, had a lot of growing up and figuring out of myself to do before I was able to write the book that got me representation (which then didn't sell! Happens all the time!) and set me on the road I'm on now.

Some people look quite crestfallen when I explain this process to them, because from a certain point of view it looks like I came out of nowhere and had a lot of sudden success. It's just there was twenty years of false starts first. So, I'm sorry to say that it might look like I found a gleaming golden key to success under my pillow, but in reality I muddled through like everyone else.

Why I can't read your book

Two reasons - time and liability. I am swimming in things I've been asked to read. I'm in an intensive critique group (usually reading 10-20k words a week) with close friends whose work I will always prioritise. I'm asked to read books for blurbing at a rate of 2-3 x per month (it honestly shocked me how quickly this started happening, and how quickly it became overwhelming for me as a fairly slow reader). I'm also doing beta reads for other writers I know well (agent siblings, people in my writing communities and so on) on and off throughout the year.

And sometimes I like to read actual books I buy with my own money, as a treat (although my reading time has plummeted in the last couple of years).

So I have vanishingly few slots in my reading capacity anyway and they're going to go to my friends and professional relationships first.

Second - liability. If someone asks to send me their book (or just sends it, though thankfully that hasn't happened yet) I can't say yes to reading it, even if I had the time or inclination, because I have no idea who you are or what your book is about. And I don't want to be accused in a few years of plagiarising a book I never read. I'm not saying you might do that, dear reader. But it's not a risk I can take with anyone I don't already know.

Why I'm the wrong person to ask anyway

I've been writing novel-length work since around 2004/2005 and I've been a productive, working novelist and short story writer (i.e. working seriously towards publication) since 2019. I got agented in 2021, had my first novel come out in 2024 and my next one is due in 2026.

By the time that second book comes out, I'll have been agented for nearly five years and writing for over twenty years. And, though I try to keep up with what's going on in the world of querying and agenthunting, it's a landscape that shifts constantly.

There are evergreen pieces of writing advice that never really become irrelevant or outdated, but a lot of things about the business side of publishing and agents and submissions and queries date within weeks or months of being written down.

I promise, you will learn a lot more and get a lot more value out of building peer relationships with other people working towards the same goals as you.

What you should do instead

First - figure out the basics. I highly recommend this collection of resources put together by the author Jules Arbeaux. It's the best single step-by-step guide to the whole process and all the different things you need to consider that I've found.

Next - learn by watching. I can't recommend the subreddit /r/PubTips enough. Read all the resources in their sidebar and read a bunch of posted queries and you'll learn pretty fast what makes for an effective query. Just like working with critique partners, you'll learn as much by reading other people's work as you will from having people give you feedback on yours.

Then - find a community. It could be an in-person writing workshop, it could be a Discord server, it could be both. Look for people whose goals and focus align with your own. If you write thrillers and want to be traditionally published and have a fast drafting speed, you probably won't do well in a monthly writing group populated mainly by poets and literary fiction enthusiasts, and vice versa. Find your people and when you click with someone, tell them. The friendships and connections I've made through writing have been honestly the greatest joy of the whole process, because nothing about the rest of it is in any way guaranteed. But making a bunch of smart, bookish, kind and generous friends is a very, very good thing indeed.

Finally - make a start. Stop looking for shortcuts and secret keys to publishing and start writing words. Find your cohort of peers and work together towards your goals. Work on your body of work. Learn how to edit. Figure out what motivates you.

Good luck. I hope you make it. And while I can't help you (individually, specifically) get published, I'm always happy to say hello and chat about books and writing.