First-time authors

For whatever it’s worth, The Week magazine recently published its list of the five best works of fiction published in 2018. The list, as every year, is based on a summary of critics’ choices from numerous sources. Of the top five titles, the first and third are by first-time authors.
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It's not possible to see who or what they wrote, or any contents at all, without subscribing to it in one way or another. So can you paste those five in to here?
I have just looked at another list of top 5 novel sellers 2018, and they are not first time writers, which can make a big difference, so it's not an old anyone's tale. wink:
Here's another list (they all differ!) https://www.amazon.com/Books/b/?ie=UTF8&node=549028&ref_=sv_b_5 I say no more. smiley:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
https://theweek.com/articles/812491/best-fiction-2018
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It made these lists, for starters...
A TIME and NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK of the YEAR
New York Times Notable Book and Times Critic’s Top Book of 2018
Named one of the best books of 2018 by Elle, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Lit Hub, NPR, O-The Oprah Magazine and Shelf Awareness.
The author worked as a freelance editor and translator in Milan. Her short story "Stump Louie" appeared in The Paris Review in 2005. Asymmetry is her first novel.
The other first-time novel is There, There by Tommy Orange.
It made these lists....
One of the Ten Best Books of the Year--The New York Times Book Review
Winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, O-The Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, The Dallas Morning News, Buzzfeed, BookPage, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews
The author, who is 36, apparently has no prior publication history at all, though he eventually studied writing at college level. In his words:
"I didn’t grow up a reader or a writer. I didn’t do well in school and wasn’t particularly encouraged to read. I was pretty good at sports. I played roller hockey on a national level from the age of 14 to 24 and I became a musician when I was 18. I earned a bachelor’s of science in sound arts and after I graduated, I got a job at a used bookstore, Gray Wolf Books, just outside of Oakland, and totally fell in love with reading and then writing. Then I felt like I was playing catch-up. I got pretty obsessive about it and tried to put in as much work as I could from there."
He has this advice for aspiring authors:
“Write as much as you possibly can—when you feel awful; when you feel good; when you hate yourself, or your writing, or both; when you don’t think what you’re working on is worth anything. When you can’t write, revise. Read your work out loud.”
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Lisa Halliday >> "Lisa Halliday has worked as a freelance editor and translator in Milan, … "
Not new to the world of writing, or those within it, then, and you cannot tell me that makes no difference.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
And I didn’t try to. But few people write in a complete vacuum. Even belonging to a writing group provides experience. Nevertheless, this doesn’t change the fact that this novel was her first. When she submitted it, she would have to have gone through the same processes as anyone else. I know people who have been in the industry longer than she was who will still have a hard time placing a book. Knowing the ropes will help you avoid making mistakes and taking missteps, but it is no guarantee of selling your book.
What seems to to have gotten both of these books published are new ideas well told.
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It's good to encourage new novelists, but let's not make them delusional. For every new writer taken up each year there's countless 1000s who are not, and it's not always because their story and English are rubbish. And not just that, even those that do get a contract don't often end up as top sellers.
This only seems to be UNESCO publications >>
http://www.worldometers.info/books/
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How is that valid then?
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Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
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That's true, but it's often how they are judged as successful. The greatest book in the world could remain unknown if few buy it!
One would hope that great stories sell very well. Then again, they sell a lot over many decades because they often don't get deleted.
McDonald’s is best-selling food. That doesn’t mean it is good.
It's not that bad in the UK after they were shamed in to creating actual food, and a greater choice. I still prefer fish and chips though.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
Well that's good, perhaps The Week's publisher publishes them?
https://mirrorbooks.co.uk/
http://www.expressbookshop.co.uk/index.html
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
By the way, the latest edition of AARP Magazine lists its Top Books of the Year. The first title in Fiction is a debut novel: Family Trust, by Kathy Wang. The story of how she came to write her first novel and get it published has a great many good lessons in it.
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Please note, too, that she did not take the route of trying to approach publishers directly, but instead was methodical in her efforts to find and interest an agent (though the processes are much the same in either case). Here, quoted from the link, are the most pertinent parts of how she went about doing this:
Wang didn’t diagram a plot or outline, but she did look to books she admired to study how authors make action emerge effortlessly from the characters and worlds they create. She read up on what defines an appropriate novel length and, hearing that 110,000 words is too much, cropped herself to 109,000 in the submission draft. She researched the market and knew if she wanted to query agents, she should hit a mid-June deadline before offices slowed down over the July 4 holiday.
Online sites such as AgentQuery and QueryTracker and profiles on Publishers Marketplace oriented Wang to the matchmaking process of finding potential agents with interests compatible to her work.
Wang made a spreadsheet of agents who’d handled books she liked, gleaned from acknowledgments pages and online analysis of what agents revealed of their preferences. She studied the art of the query letter, a cold intro that has to be written like a job applicant’s cover letter.
While a great letter doesn’t necessarily correlate with a great manuscript, the methodical research that goes into writing an informed, well-targeted query can pay off.
“Being polite and conscientious goes a long way,” she added, noting that if an agent likes your letter, he or she might want to see a few pages, a partial cut of a manuscript or even the full document. “Every agent is a person, they have personal taste, and they like to know that you researched.”
If an agent asks to call you, you have a decent chance of getting offered representation, or at least a request for you to revise and resubmit. An agent typically takes 15 percent of an author’s revenue, and in exchange navigates an author through the book deal and publishing process...agents serve as a first line of vetting who can vouch for the manuscripts they bring to the table...After making a verbal agreement with an editor...the real revision process [begins].
And here is a sobering observation from near the end of the article...
Nearly three-quarters of books don’t ultimately earn more than an author’s initial advance...
(I should point out, however, that that may affect the author more than the publisher. That a book failed to make back the author’s advance doesn’t necessarily mean that it failed to make a profit—or at least broke even—for the publisher.)Black Cat Studios http://www.black-cat-studios.com/
Authors who misread the potential market for their book, who don't pay any attention to the special interests of a publisher or agent (such as submitting an erotic lesbian vampire novel to a publisher of Christian children's picture books), who refuse to follow the proper submission requirements...all they do is make things more difficult for themselves than they already are.
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* Picking a major publisher more or less at random, I just took a browse through the latest list of Algonquin Books, one of the largest independent publishers of literary fiction in the US (it is an imprint of Workman Publishing). Of the first thirty books listed, thirteen were first novels. That's slightly more than one-third. Of these thirteen authors, nine had previously published short stories, articles or essays. Of the remainder, their novels were their first experience in publishing. Even if you want to only count those authors, they still represent a significant fraction.
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http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kevinlomas
I would hope not as much of a task as Wang made it.
(though I would argue that it is not "rare, very rare" for first-time authors to get published*),
But it is. Novelists that is. When you look in to their backgrounds few are new to writing.
one only stacks the cards against oneself by not taking the time and trouble to do the proper homework. Following all the steps she did is no guarantee of success,
If Wang put as much effort in to promoting her book once published, it should have been a top seller, although all those awards will help.
but it will increase your chances...and regardless of the outcome you will know that you did all you could.
It's true that it's pointless approaching publishers and agents that have no interest in one's type of book, but Wang did indeed turn it in to the type of thing a Corporation would do when considering a new product, and then who would want it. It's doubtful most people have the knowledge or the time to do that. It's also depressing that someone would look at what's the trend, and then write a story to match.
Authors who misread the potential market for their book, who don't pay any attention to the special interests of a publisher or agent (such as submitting an erotic lesbian vampire novel to a publisher of Christian children's picture books),
What if it's a story about a Christian lesbian vampire, who looks 10, but is really 500?
who refuse to follow the proper submission requirements...all they do is make things more difficult for themselves than they already are.
Quite so. However, one recommended method is to use what almost amounts to spam. Send out 100s of approaches a week, and send to the same places the following week, keep doing it until one lands on the desk at just the right time to be opened. A bit like a Readers Digest's mailshots.
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* Picking a major publisher more or less at random, I just took a browse through the latest list of Algonquin Books, one of the largest independent publishers of literary fiction in the US (it is an imprint of Workman Publishing). Of the first thirty books listed, thirteen were first novels. That's slightly more than one-third. Of these thirteen authors, nine had previously published short stories, articles or essays. Of the remainder, their novels were their first experience in publishing. Even if you want to only count those authors, they still represent a significant fraction.
You looked up all of their backgrounds? Well, anyway, just taking one, Hilary Jordon >> "She received a BA from Wellesley College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University." which I have often said, helps when writing anything a publisher would be interested in. And what is this all about? > "It won the 2006 Bellwether Prize for fiction, awarded biennially to an unpublished work of fiction that addresses issues of social justice," but whatever that award is (there seems to be so many!) that also stood her in good stead with a publisher.
But the bottom line must be, Lulu is a self-publishing. Some may have already done what you are promting, but with no results, or why would they be here? To answer for myself, because I am lazy
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A Southern Living Best New Book Coming Out Winter 2019
A TIME Best New Book to Read in January 2019
A Buzzfeed Book Coming In 2019 That You'll Want To Keep On Your Radar
A Vulture Best New Book You Should Read This January
And, yes, I realize that while Kochai is a first-time novelist he is not a first-time author. In fact, the story upon which this novel is based won the 2018 O. Henry Prize. But this only underscores the value of working hard at your writing and trying to get your work into print, whether it be short story, essay, article or poem, in any professional venue, whether that be newspaper, magazine or literary journal. Even Margaret Mitchell, whose 38 rejections of Gone With the Wind is the standard model for perseverance, was a professional journalist before writing her first novel.
There are two points to bringing up books like 99 Weeks. The first is, of course, that publishers have no prejudice against first-time, untried novelists, something too many hopeful authors believe. The second is that it pays to work hard at your craft and part of this entails getting experience working with editors and publishers at any scale, from the smallest literary journal to the largest magazine or newspaper. This can not only help hone your work to a fine edge but also provides you with at least something to point to by way of experience when writing your query letter...even if it's nothing more than saying "I wrote a weekly column on gardening for the Plunkville Gazette."
"Weeks in Logar," the basis for Kochai's novel, was originally published in Public Space, a relatively small "literary, arts, and culture magazine" founded in 2006. It was this story that won an O. Henry Prize last year. Most of the other O. Henry Prize winners last year also first appeared in small literary magazines and journals, such as Fence, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, One Story, New England Review, Threepenny Review and others. A very great many writers have used publications like these as springboards. One Story, for instance, has published the work of 200 writers since the magazine was founded in 2002 while Prairie Schooner is "a national literary quarterly [that] is home to the best fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews being published today by beginning, mid-career, and established writers." [emphasis mine]
Venues like these---and there are scores of such magazines and journals---are an excellent way for an author to hone their craft as well as get the experience of working with knowledgeable editors. The feedback received from the latter can be invaluable. The fact that these outlets specialize in short fiction (in addition to essays, poetry, etc.) also enables the burgeoning author to do this without investing the time required to create novel-length works. The practice, training and lessons learned in producing the shorter pieces will go toward making their longer works better and, hopefully, more successful.
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https://apple.news/AFgy-IfmpQW-hy-V-Hu-H1Q
Again, it is an example of someone writing their first book after having previously honed their craft by writing for whatever professional and semi-professional venue they could find.
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