How I bounced back from rejection
I’M GOING to ask you to do something you’ve never done before and be part of a revolution in publishing, but first let me tell you a story. In 1992, I lost my girlfriend in a bus crash in Ecuador. As I watched the coffin being lowered in to the ground, I vowed I would build a monument to honour her memory. I thought about the The Taj Mahal; the ultimate temple to lost love, but a marble palace was ever so slightly beyond my price range. What other options were there, apart from the ubiquitous park bench inscription? I decided to write a book and eventually, in 2006, after 10 rewrites, it was finished.
But my little monument to love was rejected by 20 publishers.
They said it would never sell. They had good reason; after all the book contained two strands — one set in the First World War on the Eastern Front, the other in the 1990s in South America and London. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, there were passages about quantum physics and photographs of animals copulating. It didn’t fit in to any genre, there was no precedent for a book of this kind and, on the surface, it looked like the work of a grieving lunatic. The book was called Random Acts of Heroic Love.
By 2007, I had given up hope. I was in Borough Market when my agent, Sophie Hicks, phoned me. ‘‘Sit down’’, she said. I found a bench. “I’ve got you a deal,” she said. My heart jumped. “From a publisher in Germany.” “Germany?” “It’s a six-figure deal.” Thank God she’d told me to sit down. The good old Germans! I could have run naked through the beer halls of Munich shouting: ‘‘All is forgiven’’.
It was such a big deal that it made news in all the trade press and, within 48 hours, my book had sold in five countries before being picked up in the UK by Transworld, Random House.
Jumping forward to February 2009, I presented my publishers with a synopsis for a second novel. I had every reason to feel confident; Random Acts of Heroic Love — the book that would never sell — had, by then, got to number one on Amazon, sold more than a quarter-of-amillion copies in the UK and been a Richard and Judy pick. I had been shortlisted for a couple of awards and was the top selling debut male author of 2008.
My book was being translated into 20 languages. It had been the most spectacular year of my life.
It therefore came as a shock when they told my agent: ‘‘This is not Danny Scheinmann’s second novel’’. Who then, I wondered, was writing Danny Scheinmann’s second novel, if not me. The decision was taken by a panel of marketing and sales people.
Again, I seemed to be writing an ‘‘unsellable’’ book. I had failed to shoehorn my ideas into a form that was acceptable to the panel. It was also a sign of how much further the power had shifted in publishing houses away from literary editors to marketeers. I was told to come back with another idea. It was pretty obvious they wanted me to write my first book all over again. Beware the pressures of success.
I filed away my ill-fated second novel and took a long break. Eventually I started to write again, but this time I didn’t tell a soul. It was a brand new story. How delicious it was to be writing from the heart once more without intervention.
And so The Half Life of Joshua Jones was born. It is a book of which I am very proud. It continues my obsession with love in the face of death, which featured in Random Acts. Like my first book, it is filled with tales of extraordinary characters and does not sit within one genre. And yet it is very different.
In the meantime, the publishing landscape has continued to change dramatically. Bookshops are closing, digital sales are on the rise, Amazon has a stranglehold on the market and the biggest high-street retailers of books are now supermarkets.
What does this mean for writers? Well, as an ex-Tesco manager told a friend of mine, ‘‘authors are now competing with bananas for shelf space.’’ In the battle between bananas and literature most writers can never win and publishers are forced to peddle celebrity books or erotica like Fifty Shades. The whole industry is heavily reliant on a small handful of banana killers to keep itself afloat. And, while readers drown in ‘‘illiterature’’ (aptly coined by the JC’s literary editor, Gerald Jacobs), thousands of beautiful, well-written books — real literature — are not even being noticed.
The good news for authors is that the internet and other advances in technology have democratised the arts. Nowhere is this more obvious than in music where people no long- er need a record label to produce a great record and have it heard by millions. We are now on the cusp of a similar revolution in books. In the near future, successful writers will build up online fan bases, set up their own micro-publishing houses and print books on demand. Currently a writer will earn, on average, eight per cent of the retail price but under this model they could earn 40-60 per cent.
It is the job of artists to set trends not follow them. I believe readers want and deserve greater choice, but, with the closure of quality bookshops, authors will have to go online to reach their audience.
I try to write intelligent, unique books that shed light on the human experience. A radical new publisher called Unbound (set up by three ambitious writers) is now enabling me and other authors to do this. They have broken the old model and are embracing the future. They give readers the rare chance to be part of the process before a book is even published. It is crowd funding with a difference. And here is how it works.
Unbound’s team of editors and writers select books and authors they really like (much in the same way as a traditional publisher might do, but with the editors in control rather than the marketeers). The books are then presented to the public on their website allowing readers to support a much wider and diverse range of books by pledging to buy the books in advance of publication. This means that, for the early birds, there is time to print their names in the back of the book to thank them for their support.
Readers can also pledge for signed copies or invitations to the book launch party and much more. When the pledge target is reached, the book gets edited and published. Thereafter, it is distributed in the normal way to bookshops, Amazon and digitally.
The Unbound model is clever. It appeals directly to readers to find out what they want to read. It gives a platform for writers to follow their passions and it produces exciting books from emerging talent. It is also low risk for the publisher, which allows them to be brave.
On their website, Unbound have engaging videos of their authors speaking about their books with synopses and sample chapters. It’s a whole new interactive book-buying experience, which brings readers and writers together. I am already half-way to my target.
If you believe in literature, come and be part of this new adventure. With your help I can get over the line in no time. How lovely it would be to see some of your names in The Half Life of Joshua Jones. To pledge for ‘The Half Life of Joshua Jones’ visit: www.unbound.co.uk and search by title or author