Trends, Faith and Hope

There is a tendency I am becoming aware of from reading literary agents’ notes about what they are looking for. There seems to be a preponderance of aims to find women’s literature, complex thrillers or the humour in modern life. This is propelled by the other bias that the significant majority of book readers are women. This manifests itself in the marketing assumptions that agents are making about what will be successful and what is a riskier. All perfectly natural. However this speaks of market followers rather than market makers. The other ‘safe bet’ that many agents and publishers follow faithfully is the ghosted celebrity opus. Public recognition of someone is far more important than merit or originality. Tabloid publishing!

Literature and publishing has many fables about what could have been. Missed chances, work rejected that later out-performed all expectations. Markets are fickle just as people are. Tastes are many and varied rather than predictable and consistent. For the unpublished writer this presents much bigger obstacles than simply the merit of the submission. Agents are making marketing decisions rather than evaluations. I have to have sympathy with their position but it does risk rote like behaviour and limits more enterprising projects.

This leaves me in slack water out of the stream for not compromising on my ambition. I do not fit the current hegemony apparent in the publishing industry. I have had minimal encouragement a 22% direct rejection rate and a 50% ‘no interest’ including rejections, to sixty submissions to date. I was warned to expect this, that writing is personal foolhardiness with no rewards and demonstrates a particularly stubborn stupidity for thinking that anyone would want to support and promote you. Gambling that you will be holding a winning lottery ticket when you are struck by lightening.

Richard Dawkins is renowned for remarking that ‘faith’ in something or someone is illogical compared to the evidence to the contrary. ‘Hope’ is a better banner to proceed under and closer to people’s life experience.

Rejection

The unavoidable aspect of submitting (10,000 words/first 3 chapters/50 pages and the variations therein of different literary agents and whether they want a synopsis to be one page/full synopsis/chapter by chapter and how much personal information they want, if any) is the, so far, inevitable rejection, short polite and unhelpful.

It sees to be that the agents are more interested in marketing and trend. No definitive evidence for this opinion but looking at the books being promoted by Bloomsbury or Waterstones there is a preponderance of women writers and modern settings exploring daily experiences. I sit at the other end of the spectrum from this trend and the ‘romantasy’ trend both aimed principally at female readers. Another trend, heavily promoted and typically ‘ghost written’, is the celebrity autobiographies after that cookbooks and other self-help volumes on any and every topic!

It feels like an uphill struggle on a rarely travelled path – trying to reach the agent who can see the potential and audience for my writing. I have picked an unfamiliar niche with the Romano-British setting at the time the Roman Empire abandons Brittania and withdraws what little resources and administration still remains leaving the British to fend for themselves against the increasing incursions from the Scotties of Hibernia (Ireland) on South West and Welsh coasts, the Picts and other warring tribes in the North and from the near continent in the East and South East.

It’s a fascinating period with increasing archaeological evidence that it wasn’t a ‘dark age’ but that life continued arguably with little difference to the day to day lives of the majority of people in the same way that changes of Government make little if any marginal difference to most people today. I’m telling the story of how Brittania responded to the challenges before the ‘English’ (Brythonic Celtic for’ foreigner’ or ‘stranger’) arrived and then the impact they had and what has become identified as

‘The Age of Arthur’ during their expansion and colonisation of much of Britain.

It’s a good read!