David Weller Author Blogspot

It was sad to hear that Samhain publishing is closing its doors after just over a decade in operation. Established in 2005 it had some 600 authors and 3000 books in print. In its heyday it was turning over some respectable numbers. However, according to the article I read, e-book sales have dropped dramatically over the past two years and Amazon wouldn't give them a higher profile on their site. Consequently the business is no longer viable. So what implications does this hold for the multitude of digital first publishers springing up everywhere? Only time will tell, I suppose. My gut feeling is that the bubble on this particular kind of enterprise has burst and most new start ups will disappear very quickly.

Querying a literary agent can be a daunting prospect, but it needn't be if you keep things in perspective. The fact of the matter is, there are a great many agents looking for suitable manuscripts and an author only needs to get lucky once. This, I suppose, is the reason why I never sweat on any submission at the initial query stage. Rejection is a fact of life and, for the reasons outlined below, an inevitable part of the process. A great many agents, particularly those based in the United States, ask a prospective client to submit just a query letter. This is the most problematic as they will make a decision on whether to request further material based solely on this. You may have written a potential best seller but if the query letter doesn't grab them that won't count for anything. A lot of first time authors shoot themselves in the foot by not researching agents throroughly enough or submitting query letters which don't conform to an accepted format. If an auth...

It's been a couple of weeks since my last update and I'm still waiting to hear back from a prospective agent on my full MS. As it's still less than three months since I sent it off I'm not that concerned by the lack of response. In the meantime I've been trying to keep my mind occupied with other things. None of them, I might add, writing related.

It's just over nine weeks since I sent off the full of my latest completed MS. Seems like a long time, but in the publishing industry that's just the blink of an eye. How much longer will I need to wait to get an answer? I might as well ask 'How long is a piece of string?' There was a time when I used to fret over such things. These days I take a much more relaxed approach to the issue. The agent concerned obviously enjoyed reading the first 20% to make a request. If they like the remaining 80%, they might make an offer. If they don't it isn't the end of the world. When I set out on this little journey I did so with the intention of self publishing. I could have done so long ago but was held back by self doubt. When I compare the latest version with the draft I had a year ago I'm glad I did. This time last year I received a request from another agent based on a fifteen page sample. To cut a long story short, I increased the word count by 20K, at their ...