I said:
1. Like a large number of people, you chose a self-publishing route for your novels. However, you've gone from strength to strength with that and now have national distribution via WHSmiths and Waterstones, and because of your success you've now landed a traditional print publishing contract with major house Simon & Schuster.
What have you done different from other self-published authors - how much is done to your writing quality, and how much is down to sheer hard work? Has lucked played any significant part?
I'll take these one person at a time, or this will be the post to end all posts!
Firstly, Brian, I would say that I didn't so much choose self-publishing, as it chose me! I only sent my first book 'The Forging of the Sword' to a couple of publishers and a handful of Literary Agents. It got straight rejections, but some of the responses from Literary Agents seemed to indicate that I had not made a complete idiot of myself by submitting it. I didn't leap straight in to self-publishing at that point; it was two years later that I was convinced to take the plunge by one of an increasing number of friends and acquaintances who had read the manuscript and liked the story.
Perhaps the greatest difference between how I have approached self-publishing, and the vast majority of others has been my attitude and self-belief. I did not begin self-publishing with the idea that it would make me rich, and I wasn't wrong! I began with the attitude that it would be a hobby. People spend money on hobbies, so I wasn't too worried about making money as such. However, as with any successful project, I did set goals and targets which made me very focused about the end results - selling the book I had taken such pains to produce. This target-setting mentality, together with my tenacity has resulted in virtually exponential growth.
I am under no illusions that The Forging of the Sword should have been accepted by a traditional publishing company. Looking at the early part of the manuscript even now, I can see many reasons for them to reject it. If I had known then what I know now, then I could have made it good enough, but nobody in the publishing business seems to have time to sit down and explain why they reject scripts - you just have to learn through feedback from any sources you can get and network, network, network!
My storylines and characterisations have always been my strength. My technical writing abilities were not so hot to begin with, but I'm constantly working to improve this, with obvious results.
Luck will always play a certain part in getting published unless your talent is so prodigious that it cannot be ignored. I know there are many writers out there with more talent than I possess who will never be published. Why? Because they didn't meet the right person, or the editor who would have loved their script was on maternity leave and the cover editor didn't like their style, or any one of a million other freak chances of fate that can prevent someone being discovered. However, there are ways of producing your own luck. My pure bloody-mindedness being a good case in point!
