Today is my stop on the Blog Tour for The Doll House by Phoebe Morgan where I welcome Phoebe to my blog where she has kindly provided a very interesting blog piece on 'How working in publishing changed your perception/motivated you to write'. I was thrilled to be asked by Helena Sheffield from Harper Collins Books to take part along with some other fab book bloggers. You can find out who else is taking part in this fabulous Blog Tour at the end of the extract so without further ado, here it is:
I did write before getting into publishing, but since being in the industry I do have quite a new perspective on it all. As a fiction editor, part of my job is to work out which books will sell and which won’t, and I spend the majority of my time reading and analysing manuscripts with the aim of making them stronger, tighter and ultimately more readable. As an editor, I put myself in the role of the reader, but when writing my own books this is harder. It’s so important to try to imagine how someone else, someone totally unconnected to you, would feel when reading your book for the first time. Would they want to read more than a page? Would they be confused by your characters? Would they be satisfied by the ending?
I really believe that we all need that outside perspective on our work, because when you’ve worked on something for so long, you do lose sight of it and it’s impossible to see it with fresh eyes. I’m very lucky to have had excellent editorial feedback from the team at HQ on my book, and the points they made were all things I agreed with but which I just hadn’t seen because I’d been staring at the page for so long. So it’s always worth having someone else read your work, whether that’s a professional editor, an agent or just a trusted friend who will give it to you straight.
Working in publishing has also given me a good insight into the amount of competition which is out there. There are many, many brilliant books in the world but I don’t think it ought to be a competition – there’s room for everyone, and what one reader might like, another might hate. Some of the books I’ve published have received rave reviews, but amongst those reviews there’s nearly always the one-star brigade, and that’s fine – no book can please everyone, because writing and reading are ultimately subjective things. However, being aware of the competition is a good thing because it’s motivating; I see other books with stand-out hooks and feel excited to read them. I look at the covers of other novels and wonder how mine sits against those, and I read as much as I can to try to understand what makes some books work and others not.
In a publishing house, I also get to see the inside process of how books are made, which I now take into account when writing. I hear sales people explain how important the cover is, and digital experts emphasise the key factors of pricing and promotion. I understand how publicity and marketing work, and above all I appreciate how much hard work goes in to bringing a novel to the market. It’s so much more than just the author, and that is something I try to think of when I’m struggling with a plot point. We all work hard at our jobs, and if this is going to be mine too, I need to have another coffee and keep going as anyone else in publishing would.
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