Have a good holiday Al! Yeah, who knows what these big business types get up to? I'm just a little fish in a big pond I'm afraid!

AT the risk of sounding a bit stoo-pid I have two points:

- First, doesn't simply posting stuff on here kind of copyright your work? Afterall, the time and date can be confirmed, and there are several thousand potential witnesses?

- And second: surely, surely, surely, if an agent has rejected your work, it just don't figure that they'd want to steal it. It's simply that they don't want it - end of story. Move on to the next. These are busy people, and poor old Katie has probably been snowed under since joining this site - I know I've sent stuff to her!!! So pretending that agents owe anyone a favour is futile, as is theorising over how only rubbish things get published coz everything is so commercial and it's all soooooo unfair etc etc, blah blah blah.

The old J.K. Rowling thing - 50 odd rejections before Bloomsbury took the plunge and transformed their entire company- is surely the kind of sentiment to keep telling yourself. Agents obviously want to sell good work, otherwise they wouldn't be agents. So if they reject you, and clearly haven't read it, then I'd take their word for it - the list is full and they just aren't gonna be looking for anyone new. No worries, just keep going.

And leave Katie, and her pitchfork phobia, alone!

I just want people to realise that although, as Katie says, the majority of stuff is dross (she might very well be talking about my stuff) I think that people shouldn't take rejections as criticism. So what if someone thinks your stuff is rubbish - I think Ken Follet is rubbish (I have a feeling I've picked on him before!). Don't worry. Again, what is motivating you to write?

Also, even if you do get an agent 1. you still have to get published 2. chances of making enough money out of writing is still small - so 95% of stuff submitted is rejected, of the 5% taken up some more never get a deal and probably another 95% never make enough money to make a career.

By all means send your manuscripts out and everything, but don't put too much weight on the response because the chances are you'll get rejected once too often and never write again. Don't let that happen.

Let writing be your primarily aim, publication can be second.

DON'T READ ON IF YOU DON'T HAVE A STOMACH FOR THE FACTS. IT AIN'T NICE!

I don't think people realise that publishing is a commercial world and not an academic one. Even if your stuff is good enough, if it doesn't find a market you'll probably never get published, or if you do, you won't stay published for long. In the bookstore I used to work at we had plenty of these. We would buy 12 for front of store, 3 months later they hadn't sold, so they got sent back. (Yes, they can do that). Then, when your second book comes out we look at our records see it didn't exactly fly off the shelves, we order 3 this time and put it in A-Z instead of upfront. What happens? It doesn't sell and in 3 months time we send it back.

Bookshops are commercial environments with profit margins, etc and the UK isn't exactly a hotbed of bookworms (to be more successful try writing in German!) The rent has to be paid and the meagre wages of the employees have to be met (very meagre!) However, it isn't all doom and gloom. If, like we did, you can get bookstores to get its staff to read and recommend one new title (including one debut novelist) as a Booksellers choice, the books would normally sell. In fact I did this back in 1996 with a published writer's debut novel who is on this site. Beforehand the book didn't sell, but put it upfront with a good review and it sells (only 3 a month, but over 3 months we'd sold 9 copies and ordered more!) Believe it or not a book only has to sell 4 times a year to become a stock item (not new titles, but backlist) and the vast majority of books don't manage even this.

One more thing, another way to make sure that your publisher thinks you're selling even if you are not: go in to bookstores and ask to sign your books as the author. Publishers normally have a rule that bookstores can't return books if they have been signed by the author. Your normal bookseller is normally awed by a living breathing author and doesn't think straight if you ask to sign your book and will let you. Hey presto, more money for you! However don't just go and sign your books without permission because then they can send them back and you might be trouble...

These are the facts agents have to be aware of. It isn't just art, it is a product!

Apologies if people think that this is depressing!

Just a thought

Just realised that this maybe going off the thread a little, but I think it's healthy to know what you are dealing with...

JA, that was fascinating! That insider's view of bookselling is exactly the sort of thing any aspiring writer needs to know.

Wish I could stay around and hear more along these lines, but I have to go, particularly as I fear I'm now at risk of the pitchfork being turned around and stuck in my delicate behind by Davey S.

Auf Wiedersehen (taking Anthony's tip!),

Al.

A very factual post JA. I think most here are aware of all this - I don't know about other people, but I write because I can't stop and for no other reason! I send my work in, but have never held any particular high hopes of its being published even though one of my reasons for writing is that people will read and enjoy the stories. However, it still begs the question - I have a similar job I guess to an agent - I have to sift through requests and pick out those that my organisation responds to. This can come in at over 100 per day. Yet in my business all requests are considered, as if we had any kind of limit those worthy of response might get missed. As our success depends on our having an appropriate clientele we really can't afford to close our lists or turn potential work away without reading it. Thats what I find so odd about the publishing world. As you said - more than 50 rejections for Rowling, and for most other major authors, and probably many resulted from the Mss not getting read in the first place. Just seems a strange way to run a business thats all.

Whoah there Al - I may be from the coun'ree but I ain't be stabbin' no-one with pitchforks. Not yet anyway...

Nah, I was just blithering on really - James (or is it Anthoney?) seems to know his stuff and that's the kind of thing I was gettin' at, but obviously didn't come across as well! I just hope we all get what we want, but havin' spent a few years tryin' to crack the music biz, I know that ain't gonna happen. Thanks to that,I'm used to not making it and maybe embittered, but I'll never, ever hold my rejection against the agent or publisher, and try and justify rejection by pretending I know more about the industry than them. At the end of the day, I want an agent, I want to make money for myself and them and I want to be the most influential Brit writer since Orwell, changing the way people think and conceive the world. But the first bit is most important at the mo' - getting' an agent and makin' some dosh - soz, but I ain't gonna be pretending its all about the writing - I wanna make it too! If I don't tho' - I won't blame the industry, coz it just ain't their fault if my manuscript doesn't set their world alight.

Here is something interesting from The Bookseller

It may seem surprising that a novel that won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize has found no leading UK publisher to take it on. But there is a more positive way of looking at the story: the acquisition of Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe is a coup for Tindal Street Press, the small, subsidised Birmingham imprint.

Clarke, born in Barbados and resident in Canada, is a poet and novelist who has been published only sporadically in the UK. The Polished Hoe had found deals in the US, the Caribbean and the Netherlands but not here until Tindal Street - which won a Booker shortlisting last year with Clare Morrall's Astonishing Splashes of Colour - acquired it, in time to bring it out by March 8, Commonwealth Day, when the author will receive his award from the Queen. The novel is the monologue of a plantation worker in post-second world war Barbados, and was described by the Toronto Star as "an unqualified masterpiece".