Literary lottery

Fresh from a meeting with Harper Collins and very encouraging signs about the impending publication (2nd June) of the paperback version of The Gilded Seal in the UK. Pre-orders are looking really strong and all the big retailers are stocking it and including it within their summer promotions. On the back of this, HC is planning to market it with posters etc. at airports and train stations. Woo-hoo.

For someone who first developed a love of thrillers when buying "bumpy cover" books at the airport, this is especially exciting. One of the biggest kicks I have ever had as a writer was when The Double Eagle was first published and I saw a massive floor to ceiling bay at Heathrow.

These days I'm a bit harder to impress. In fact aspiring writers often ask me what it feels like to see my book on the shelf and are a bit disapointed when I say not much. Maybe I've got a bit blase (how do you do an accute accent?) about things as time has gone on or forgotten that just getting published is in itself an achievement. The problem is, I've never seen it quite like that - in my view, if a book gets published it's because a publisher thinks they can make some money out of it, not as some act of selfless charity that a writer should in some way be grateful for. And being on the shelf is nothing (actually that's a lie - you wouldn't believe how hard it is to even get stocked) - it's selling copies that counts!

Depressingly, according to a report I read in The Times late last year, of 200,000 titles sold in the UK in 2007, 190,000 sold fewer than 3,500 copies. More damning still, of 85,933 new books published, as many as 58,325 (or 68%) sold an average of just 18 copies. Can you believe that? All that grief to write and edit and publish a book and then its sells an average of 18 copies. That must mean there are tens of thousands of books selling no copies at all.

In a way, the whole publishing game is a bit like walking across the Peninnes - every time you think you've reached the top of a hill you find that another, higher crest, lies just behind it. Write a book, get an agent, get a publisher, get stocked, get reviewed, get accepted into retail promotions, sell ten copies, ten thousand copies, sell a hundred thousand copies, have a movie made ... It's a never-ending staircase which leads ... God knows where.

Looking back, the hardest part for me was getting an agent rather than getting a publisher. It took almost a year to get an agent, whereas it took my agent a week to get two offers - that's the advantage of having someone who knew exactly who would like my writing. I remember one day when I was visiting him and went to hang up my coat. He pointed me to a large cupboard - perhaps six feet long and eight high - and when I opened it was stuffed neck-high with manuscripts. This was, apparently, their slush pile - unsolicited manuscripts sent in by aspiring writers. And believe it or not it was onto this pile that my own rather rubbish early draft had been slung, slowly working its way up through a series of readers until six months later I got a call from J-Lo lui-meme and an offer to take me on.

We're talking about hundreds, possibly thousands of manuscripts a year, of which they will publish six, maybe ten books. So while seeing my book on the shelf doesn't quite excite me as much as it probably should, I do get a kick every time I think of that cupboard and beating the odds. Now I just need to sell more than 18 copies ...

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By the way, conference season is starting soon so thought I would tell you about two upcoming events I'm speaking at, where I am hoping not to have to repeat last year's Daphne du Maurier fun and games (see Mild and Bitter):

CrimeFest - Bristol - 5-8 June
SCARED TO DEATH: CHILLS AND THRILLS - 7th June (9:00AM)
CHAIR: Declan Hughes
PANEL :Katherine John, Michael Marshall, Jason Pinter, James Twining
CrimeFest website

Harrogate Crime Writing Festival - 17- 20 July 2007
JAMES BOND - THE SPY WE LOVED - 18th July (5pm)
CHAIR: Simon Brett
PANEL: Joseph Finder, Catherine Sampson, Charlie Higson, James Twining
Harrogate website