30 things I've learnt from 5 years being published: no 29 – publishing runs on hype
September 6 2023 marks 5 years since my first novel was released 😲
I’ve now published 6, and have 2 more under contract.
To celebrate, I’m sharing a new post about what I’ve learnt from being published EVERY DAY throughout the month. This post is part of that series!
Click here for the rest →
The most shocking thing I think I have learnt from my five years of being published is that the industry often knows which books are going to be the next ‘big books’ far, far in advance of publication. And sometimes even before they are even bought by publishers. 😮
(Please note that this doesn’t mean that the industry knows these books are going to be SUCCESSFUL from a sales point-of-view. No one knows for sure which books will take off - publishers can only try their hardest and hope that readers respond as they planned).
But the industry knows which books are going to sell for big money, suck up a hundred foreign rights deals and have film producers battling over them for the screen rights, sometimes BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN SECURED AN INITIAL PUBLISHER.
It’s all down to the magic fuel that powers the publishing industry: hype.
I talked a bit about hype and how important it is to publishing in my previous post about editors.
But before I was published I didn’t realise just how early on in the process the hype factor kicks in.
I guess I thought maybe it kicked in after the first positive review was published in a newspaper.
Or maybe when a book got shortlisted for an award.
Or maybe - at the earliest - if another ‘big’ writer read an early copy and praised a book, making everyone sit up and pay attention.
Of course, all of these things increase a book’s chance of doing well. However, the hype starts building long before any of those things are even a twinkle in an author’s eye.
It all starts with those mysterious beings known as literary scouts.
After five years, I still don’t know a huge amount about literary scouts!
I believe that they work for publishers and it’s their job to network relentlessly with agents and feed back to their publishing clients about which potentially big books are about to go on submission.
This primes the publishers to get involved early on in the process, meaning that when a book does go out on submission, things move really quickly.
And the quicker things move, the more hype is built… the more likely other publishers are to get involved in the process and then the whole thing just snowballs.
Perhaps it’s because there are no guarantees in publishing, and editors feel more confident betting on things other editors are betting on?
I mean, I’d like to believe it’s because these are the ‘best’ new books worthy of literary greatness.
But I think a lot of it is down to zeitgeist, timing and whether or not the scouts hail the book as something exciting.
When I was an interiors journalist, we worked a lot with a trend forecasting agency, and I always wondered how they came up with ‘trends’.
There was a lot of research that went into it and it was absolutely fascinating - so much is dependent on the mood of the nation and external cultural events that didn’t necessarily seem linked at all.
Maybe publishing is similar?
I’m not an expert on this, but I had a tiny taste of how the hype element works just before my bookclub novel, The One That Got Away, went out on submission.
The scouts had already heard about it (I think maybe because my foreign rights agent had been chatting to someone), and my agent actually had a UK editor email her to ask to read it before she’d even sent it out.
Then I got an offer from a UK publisher a week later, and a pre-empt from the US the week after that. And then a handful of foreign deals the week after.
However, before you think I’m showing off here - hype can fade just as quickly!
Sadly, many authors know the cold, lonely experience of going from feeling as though you are the most important author in your publisher’s stable to wondering if your editor is still alive as you haven’t heard from them in so long…
Hype is a tricky, nebulous thing. Almost a social contagion.
As an author, we don’t have a huge amount of control over the hype factor.
However, I DO think it’s incredibly important we hype ourselves up from time to time!
With my website clients, I always advise them to celebrate and share ANY and ALL wins, no matter how small.
How people ‘see’ you in this business really counts for a lot, and you can definitely help build your own hype if you’re clever about it 😉
Hey, I write novels, but I also build websites!
If you’re an author and don’t have one yet (or you have one that’s so awful you never tell people about it!) then check out how I can help →
