What are you reading now?

[french frank]

After my latest royalties from the sales of both of my novels, I am beginning to wonder why I bothered.

I suppose the answer to that question is that this depends on one's reasons for writing a novel in the first place. Money? Celebrity? A contribution to literary art?

[Padraig]

I suppose the answer to that question is that this depends on one's reasons for writing a novel in the first place. Money? Celebrity? A contribution to literary art?

Whatever the reason the desired result is never guaranteed - unless maybe one is already a respected author. Condolences Jonathan. I assume a contribution to literary art is your reason, and if I ever have an urge to write a novel that would be my reason too. But I know that I have neither the courage nor the ability to enter the fray, so I will never face the frustration you have experienced.
On the other hand I expect that you will have received encouragement and appreciation from your friends. If I were you I would value that, and it might encourage me to try again.

[smittims]

There are many novelists whose first two or three novels sold poorly, but when a later novel had big sales,the early novels started selling better too. This happened to Virginia Woolf , for instance.

A curious thing I've noticed is that later, successful (in terms of sales and readership) novels tend to be disparaged by critics. Virginia's The Years, Conrad's Chance, and Turgenev's Virgin Soil all had noticeably better sales than their earlier books but have a poor critical reputation. They're all favourite 're-reads' of mine.

[Jonathan]

I suppose the answer to that question is that this depends on one's reasons for writing a novel in the first place. Money? Celebrity? A contribution to literary art?

Well FF, it was mostly because I thought I'd have a go at writing a book (ok, it turned into 2 with a third in progress) but it would have been nice to have made a reasonable amount of money from it! So far, I've spent more on the advertising than I've made in royalties. I gave up on the advertising in the summer as, despite 1600 page views / unique users, not one single copy was attributable to that.

Secretly, I'd hoped someone would have contacted me about turning it into a TV series and then I could give up work and write. Dreams....

Thanks for your kind words Padraig, yes my friends have been most encouraging and I will write book 3 and finish the trilogy (although it might turn into a quadrology) but the problem is now with a stressful job I've not had any inclination to continue the story. Life gets in the way!

[french frank]

Well FF, it was mostly because I thought I'd have a go at writing a book (ok, it turned into 2 with a third in progress) but it would have been nice to have made a reasonable amount of money from it! So far, I've spent more on the advertising than I've made in royalties. I gave up on the advertising in the summer as, despite 1600 page views / unique users, not one single copy was attributable to that.

Well, I have two examples to quote. A friend wrote a collection of short sories and self-published them, i.e. paid to have them printed and bound as a paperback by a local printer (very nicely too) and then stuck a slip in his Christmas cards to friends with all the details. The printer undertook a certain amount of the publishing services with a web presence, but all financial risk lay with the author. I bought a copy - and thought them very well written and passed the word on to one of his students and she bought a copy too. I don't like to ask how many copies he had printed or has left ... I doubt he made much money, if any.

My only (completed) novel was first sent to a professional reader who made suggestions which I rejected out of hand because it meant completely rethinking what I was trying to say (which obviously hadn't been made clear! ). Established publishers don't now accept unsolicited manuscripts, so I approached several agents, one of whom was complimentary but they currently 'didn't have a suitable gap in their list' (can't remember the exact phrase but it meant NO). But my view was that if it didn't reach the publishable standards set by professionals, I didn't want it published anyway. If it it didn't make it through the system it probably just wasn't good enough. (Also I didn't reveal my own name at any point in the process! )

[smittims]

For someone who simply wanted to have a go at writing a book I'd say you've done well to get two novels published!

It seems to me that novels that sell nowadays are the result of a lot of knowledge and research into the most saleable plots, character names and ages, and even paragraph and sentence length. I even think it likely that a lot of novels are 'written' by computers with all this data programmed in. I wouldn't be surprised if this applies to those novels 'ghost-written' by bright english-lit. graduates employed by publishers to produce the novels that appear under the names of celebrity TV chefs and gardeners .

To my mind, someoen who just wanted to write a book deserves far more praise than that. It would be nice to think this could still succeed. But I fear its about as likely as someone driving a hire-purchase Delahaye from London to Le Mans and taking patrt in the 24-hours, as Rob Walker did in 1939.