It's been a while Pt 3 - what we... no...what I have been up to. I became a...

[Thai Dhupp]

DISCIPLINE

Yes please oh sorry...thats another thread elsewhere.

Right..in this case, you need discipline to do the writing. Throughout the writing journey there will be ups and downs, but you need to work through them if you want to produce a finished manuscript. Can you rigidly stick to a daily timetable to get the manuscript finished? (I know I can't). That's just one way, but not for everyone.

But you do need some regularity. Not all day, no. That's not possible. You would get burn out. but some part of the day cleared so that you can focus on the story. In my case, it was not every day. When I was writing, I aimed for 1,000 words in each writing session. Sometimes I did more - a lot more. the most I did was 5,000 words but you know what? I had to go back over that and edit, chop and change. You cannot maintain the level of concentration needed to write coherently. Well...I can't, anyway! The 1,000 words still needed editing, btw but it was mainly where I had found a better way of telling that part of the story. Sometimes, of course I did less.

I also had days where I did none and did not feel guilty about it. No sense in beating yourself up. Also, as any writer will tell...you have blocks, the dreaded 'writer's block', where you can not string sentences together much less add to the storyline. In that case...best to completely leave it and go do something else.

Still more days were spent on the research without typing a single word.

You will find your own level of discipline, of commitment, if you are serious about producing something. There is no 'right' answer - all authors do it differently, do it their own way.

[Thai Dhupp]

What is your nom de plume

I dont have one , Mike...I will be writing under my own name, so... Thai Dhupp.

[Norton]

Looking forward to viewing the soon to come Netfix series.

[Thai Dhupp]

Looking forward to viewing the soon to come Netfix series.

If only, Norton, if only.

The holy grail of writing is a TV series or...even better... a movie, epecially if it has some big name in the starring role.

1. you get an additional payment, separate to what is agreed for the book
2. Exposure. you will be in more demand for interviews and magazine write-ups. Free publicity.
3. You will, hopefully sell more books as people learn of the story, saw the movie and want more depth that only a book can bring - the movie is free publicity.

4. You will get feelthee rich....

[malmomike77]

Looking forward to viewing the soon to come Netfix series.

if you have any influence TD, can you ensure the actors enunciate clearly, the sound levels are edited correctly and it is possible to see the scenes with out turning the brightness up to 99

[Thai Dhupp]

if you have any influence TD, can you ensure the actors enunciate clearly, the sound levels are edited correctly and it is possible to see the scenes with out turning the brightness up to 99

I have some influence, Mike.

'I'll see what I can do...'

Might be a bit of a challenge, though because I see Jason Statham in the main detective role...

[malmomike77]

Might be a bit of a challenge, though because I see Jason Statham in the main detective role...

you'd better finish it quick and get it in production, have you seen how young his bird is?

[Thai Dhupp]

you'd better finish it quick and get it in production, have you seen how young his bird is?

Rosie HW? she's around 35, i think - maybe a bit more. They have been together for over 10 years.

She scolded me the last time they were here because I still had not finished the swimming pool and she had some micro-bikinis she wanted to test. I offered to fill the jacuzzi bath but she said it just wasn't the same - the jets made the 2-piece shift around and she could not be sure she was fully covered, or that she even noticed that she wasn't.

I just nodded but that made me bite my tongue which, for some reason, was hanging out.

Jase just , y'know rolled his eyes.

[malmomike77]

Rosie HW? she's around 35, i think - maybe a bit more. They have been together for over 10 years.

exactly, she's taken most of his essence, he ain't got long

[Norton]

You will get feelthee rich....

Noted...

"According to a recent report, Netflix paid a whopping $50 million to secure the rights to the best-selling novel “The Power of the Dog”.

This showcases the lengths that Netflix is willing to go to acquire the rights to highly sought-after books."

How Much Does Netflix Pay For Book Rights? - Own Your Own Future

[Thai Dhupp]

Noted...

"According to a recent report, Netflix paid a whopping $50 million to secure the rights to the best-selling novel “The Power of the Dog”.

This showcases the lengths that Netflix is willing to go to acquire the rights to highly sought-after books."

How Much Does Netflix Pay For Book Rights? - Own Your Own Future

I would, reluctantly, give my manuscript away for only 10% of that...

[Stumpy]

PM Somtaslap. He wrote a book about living in Isaan I believe.

[Thai Dhupp]

PUBLISHING ROUTES

Right...there are basically three ways to get your manuscript out there...

Traditional publishing
This is where you write your manuscript, do the editing, query the agents, secure one, they approach publishers and hopefully the book get taken up and ultimately gets released on the unsuspecting public.

The agent will negotiate the 'advance' and the royalties. The advance is the sum of money the publisher will pay you as part of the contract, based on how many books they think you will sell. It might be £1-2k, it might be 10k even 20k. Exceptional works advance might get into 6 figures but that would be rare (though not impossible) for a debut author.

The advance is not free money though. It is part of the overall contract and your remuneration. You get the advance then the publisher sells books and you do not see ANOTHER PENNY until the book sales, and specifically your % of it exceeds the advance. Some sales never exceed the advance so you 'win' but not really. It will be harder to sell another book with that publisher OR they will slash the advance.

Royalty payment are a % of the book selling price... might be 8 or 9% or you might get into double figures.

The agent obviously gets paid, too. 15% of everything is the norm. The advance and the royalties. The publisher pays them all the money and they forward the balance to you.

The benefits are no further costs. The agent and publisher do most of the work and you are involved in re-writes and some promo work as required. The book might on average hit the market THREE YEARS after the publisher agrees to produce it

Self publishing
As the name suggests, you are in control of your destiny because...you do everything. you write the book, obviously. They you pay for developmental and grammatical editing. This alone might be £1500. You arrange for the book to be printed. You do the marketing and promo. You make yourself available morning noon and night to sell books. you do everything and you pay for everything. This could easily cost you £,500 to £4,000 before you sell anything.

Ha...but when you do start selling... you keep ALL the money, not a percentage. This could be the way to go if you are rock solid certain that your book will sell and its not a vanity project. Outlaying several thousand quid is not to be sneezed at if you have no support team or back up to guide you. you will get your book to the market quickly...maybe 6 months after you finish the work and do the editing. That is a lot faster. There is a huge amount of stress and uncertainty with self-publishing and you need to be aware of that before launching into this route.

If only there was a way that sort of amalgamated the best of the first two routes to get your book on the shelves and on Amazon... Well, there is.

Hybrid publishing
This is a little of the best of all worlds. 1. you don't need an agent so save a lot of time and rejection. As long as you go with a reputable hybrid publisher, they will only accept your work IF is is commercially viable. they sort of so the job of the agent. The timescales are much quicker, because you save that lengthy agent-quest and the hybrid publisher is keen to get your work polished up and ready for sale once they have agreed to take it on. 3. you will pay some money towards the production of the book - the services provided, etc but it is MUCH LESS than the self-publishing route. 4. You have a support team around you from day 1. All those needed services the editing and proofreading are taken care of in-house.5. They market the book...its in their interest to do so but of course, they want you to do some promo work as well. thing of Hybrid publishing as a partnership, you are both in it to win together.

Now...the money. OK...no agent to pay so you save the 15% but also..no advance (some established authors on the hybrid route may get a very small advance but tbh if the book is good, you are better off not having it. Then, depending on the contract you will get 50% of the sale price! This is mega. If you sell your paperback for £10...you get £5... for every book you sell. Same with the kindle option. 50%. There is no retention. no delay. The check comes every 3 months. Marketing abroad? No problem. the hybrid publisher takes care of it, and you still get your percentage. movie or series right? yes.. they will push it and you get the %age. They will even organise translation if the market demands it. i.e all the benefits of traditional publishing but in a self-publishing timescale.

So what's the down side? You pay something, but if you went self-published, you would pay more. The publisher still has to like and accept your work but that would give you an indication as to whether the work is actually commercially viable, same as traditional publisher/agent


Some folks like the comfort of the traditional route and if they can get on it they are well supported all the way through to publication, but in the trad route timescale. Getting on it might prove the hardest part.

Others want to do it themselves - the control, the satisfaction of saying 'I did it all', and the timescale can be slashed. The potential revenue could be a lot more, as long as they are prepared to go the extra mile in promotion work.

Lastly, hybrid users want some control, the support services and the reduced timescale and are prepared to share the cost and promo work in order to ultimately get a better % of the book sale.


If it was your choice...which one would you go for?!

[Thai Dhupp]

EDITING -1

So eventually I finished my work, or so I thought. 117,000 words. I was proud and relieved. Now to sell it.

But wait...

A bit more research told me that crime fiction novels were usually between, 80,000 and 90,000 words. Ooops I wrote too much!

Here comes the first edit. I had to cull the best part of 30,000 word and still retain the story. This is the crux of editing. Dont be wordy. We are not trying to impress with volume, Cut he fluff and tell the story straight. losing 30k of word was a lot harder than I thought it would be and necessitated the re-writing of large passages of the story.

If I am honest, the story was a bit windy. I concentrated on using a lot of words to over-describe events, and once i read it back the first time , with my 'reduce the wordcount' hat on, i could see the sections that needed to be err...'modified'.

And so edit number 1 got underway...I

Some time later, I had it down to 86,000...much more manageable and within industry suggested limits. The reasoning, BTW is all to do with page count. More words more pages less profit in the SRSP unless that price is increased which in turn might deter buyers.

Next...BETA readers...what the outside world thinks of your efforts...

[Thai Dhupp]

BETA READERS

Who are they? what are they for? why bother?

Quite imply, you need feedback. You wrote the story. You know the tory. Your brain can 'join the dots' even if you wrote something that doesn't make sense. That's where the BETA reader comes in. If you don't get this independent feedback, your manuscript may well be full of errors that you simply 'can't' see.

Ahh the independent eye. it's important so choose your BETA readers well. They can come from family or they can be friends. They can be independent and even a 3rd party BETA-reading service. Note I said reading service. Not 'review service'. There is a huge difference.

I had a retired detective inspector, a police officer, a lawyer, an expert witness manager, a good friend, my son, and his girlfriend, and another friend in the Caribbean who checked a specific part of the book. So...eight readers. You can never get enough feedback and they all proved to be useful one way or another.

What they must do, essentially is read the book or the specific section of the book. They must treat it seriously. It's not a game. You need something back, not just a 'wow great story. I enjoyed it!' comment...and thats it. Where was it good? Where was it less so? Did you understand the character interaction? Did the book flow correctly (in my case...no it didn't.)? Are the characters, the side stories, the murders...are they believable? Did the ending catch your imagination? This is what you need. Not 'you missed a full stop on page 223 but otherwise...great!'

I had other BETA readers as well but ultimately had to let them go because they could not commit to the BETA reading requirements. Oh and of course... your BETA readers must be ...readers! lol that's pretty obvious.

My BETA readers stepped up admirably, with well-thought out comment and direction where I had missed something or not explained it properly. As a result of their comments, some quite brutal, I re-wrote sections of the book so that everyone could understand my story, not just me. There is no harm in asking your BETA reader to re-read an amended section, either.

And in return... each reader would get a signed copy of the finished book...IF it made it to publication.

[Thai Dhupp]

PM Somtaslap. He wrote a book about living in Isaan I believe.

OK so..he produced something, and one other TD member I heard from also had work published... great stuff!

So...2 writers, or actually, 2 published authors.

And me!

Three of us, but I did wonder, is there anyone else out there in TD-Land who has either written something and even had it published, or is thinking about doing something (or maybe is already in the process of writing something)?

With the TeakDoor thousands, there must be more than just three of us actually putting (digital) pen to paper, right?

Now come on...don't be shy...!!

[Thai Dhupp]

EDITING -2

Now you have a pile of comments (hopefully) an can set about making those changes, or at least deciding whether to amend the manuscript of not. After you have completed this exercise, it is time to read the manuscript through, again.

This will be to consider altering any sections of text, if there is a better way of describing something, or telling the story. One part of writing, and I fell foul of this, is using a phrase more than once in your manuscript.

For example, if the forensics lab described a victim as 'as dead as dead can be', you can't really repeat that same phrase again in the book. Much later in the book, Liam thinks his lucky escape was 'thanks to his inner senses, his honed defences...'. again, that phrase can only be used once.


The exception to this might be a catch phrase, or a dramatic line

The detectives in my book took to asking themselves 'where is he?, as in this section:

----
The third development was the most important to Graham Tonnick.

Finally, he and Gemma had set a date for the wedding, which would take place in late September. As he pondered the date and all the arrangements that had to be made between now and the big day, he couldn’t help thinking that it would be better if no big cases were open around that time. That got him thinking, and inevitably, the case that had eluded him came to mind. The Jason case, and his burning question.

Where is he?

***

At that very moment, Liam was… in the engine room. He was carrying out the daily monitoring and checking regime. He ticked off the list of items on the clipboard as he went around.
---

Liam was in fact still on the caribbean cruise ship. The same phrase might come out in conversation, like in this passage:

---

He has this other name, did you know? ‘
Tonnick was about to say, ‘really?’ but before he could, Max, who was playing along, had already spoken.
‘Which is?’ he asked, not looking up.
Tonnick looked sideways at Max, willing him not to blow their best and only lead.
‘What can you tell us about Nicolas?’ Tonnick tried to sound upbeat almost chatty.
‘OK, I can see you are playing dumb, so let’s try another way. What do you want to know about this person you say you never heard of?’ Rose Hill sounded a little exasperated. She was not ready for the response. Both men stopped and looked at each other
‘Where is he?’ they said in unison.

Rose Hill pulled the chair closer to the table, took a sip of water, and began to tell them everything she knew.

---
Rose Hill was the surrogate mother, after Liam's parents were killed, and she became the detective's number one lead. In this case, the catchphrase, 'where is he' is not out of place if repeated as it re-enforces the exasperation of Tonnick and the team.

To produce work of novel length, you need to be able to have several ways of telling the story.

Anyway, assuming you add the Beta reader comments, and review the manuscript again, and maybe you make a few changes as a result, and you are pretty pleased with it all... Now is the time to seek representation and ultimately find a publisher

[Thai Dhupp]

FINDING THAT PUBLISHER - what I tried to do at first.

Well, I knew about agents, so obviously...I needed one!

I researched 'agents and how to find them' and it quickly became apparent that the go-to application was the afore-mentioned Query Manager. I signed up and was faced with 1000's of agents all over the world. after tinkering about a bit, i managed to make the filters work and had a subset of around 2,000 agents who represented crime fiction authors.

One other thing I forgot to mention, about those agents. they get 'burn out' i gues because of being faced with the sheer volume of queries on a daily basis. when it all gets too much, they turn on the 'closed to queries' sign on their listing. At some point down the line, when they ahve cleared the decks, they will re-open and look for new submissions.

So, I had my 2,000 agents but after removing all those who were closed, that dropped to around 1650. Still a huge number.

The next thing to understand about the process and the right way to do it is to limit how many agents you query at a given time. It may be tempting to scatter-gun your queries and submit to ALL, in my case 1,650 agents but wait a minute. What happens if your query is amateurish, or missing something, or you worded the into cover letter wrong, or you did not follow the submission guideline? I can tell you what happens. What happens is... you just blew your chance with that agent.

Generally, you cant keep re-querying the ame agent after a rejection, for whatever reason - you get one chance only.(remember what i said earlier about the god-like attitude of some agents!?). So if you send out your hatily (and wrongly) submitted query an it i rejected BY ALL 1650 agent, lol... you better try for that job in KFC or look at self-publishing!!

The recommended number of submissions is 8-10 oper round. Agents will very rarely get back to you by return. I had one who did just that (rejection) but in the main it can be 'within 3 months'. hopefully you will get tkn up or at least, the agent likes your ubmision enough to ask for more, or even the whole manuscript to ee if its a good fit.

What is more likely though is...rejection. Don't be disheartened though. It's nothing personal. Your manuscript did not quite fit with the agents overall plan or they did not think it commercial. Could be any number of reasons... and the next agent you submit to might think its amazing and sign you up straight away. All this feedback is useful for bettering your query for the next round of submissions.

Now do you see why you should not do all the queries on day 1!?

Th down side to this is of course...time. I felt the time pressure as soon as I started the querying process...

[DrWilly]

Time pressure? Is it not a waiting game?

[Thai Dhupp]

Time pressure? Is it not a waiting game?

Its yet another balancing act, DW.

On the one hand you want to query correctly on the other you dont want to burn through several years before you have queried everyone. As I said...at the start of the querying process, 8-10 queries only, get the feedback, modify and improve your submission paperwork and repeat.

After some time though, your submission is as good as it will be and you can shorten the query time delay from 3 month to 2 weeks, thus speeding up the number of queries you have out there.

There is one flip side to speeding up, though.

You might have 3 or 4 round of querying out there, and in your last batch is an agent you have come across that you really want to work with

but before they respond, another agent from your earlier round offers representation. It is what you have been working for. You take it.

Then the agent you wanted come back after you have signed up, offering representation!

[Thai Dhupp]

SEEKING REPRESENTATION

I had my list of 1,650 agents who were active and looking for crime thrillers.

I started with the first, read the submission guidelines and emailed my query off. Most of the agents actually ask that all submissions are done through Query manager (the site has the ability to do that), so the next 5 I queried was done in that way.

6 queries. I was testing the water. What happens next, etc. I checked Query Manager every day, several times a day in fact. Nothing. No responses. Of course, now I know that this is perfectly normal.

It was 3 weeks later I got the first reply. ' very interesting but not a good fit for me, etc. It may well fit with other agents.' blah blah. OK I got over the disappointment and got another batch of queries ready. These were sent, early I know, after 1 month, not 3. Woohoo! I got a reply by return, almost. 2 days! surely, this level of enthusiasm must be acceptance, right!?

Wrong

Rejection. Again...along with 4 other rejections from the first batch.

OK I need to improve the submission. I re-wrote the prologue for the book to make it more punchy. By altering the words (reducing) in chapter 1 I moved the murder up a bit. Now for query round 3, but I will just wait until some more responses come to see if there i actually something glaringly obvious that is wrong, or 'bad'.

Nothing came back so query round 3 was sent off. I waited and waited. No replies from any one. Then a couple came back from round 2. 'well written', 'good twist in the story - I like it' Yeah you like it but not enough to represent me!?!?!? hmmm Ok... I was getting used to this rejection and after reading about other budding writers rejection stories, involving triple-figure rejections I knew I was in good company and indeed not as bad off as some.

A I said earlier...rejection is the most common outcome.

I was certainly feeling it at this point.

[Thai Dhupp]

IS THERE ANOTHER WAY?!

I started to look at the other publication routes, more out of interest than anything, in case down the line, I decided to alter course and go with one of them.

I soon realised that for me, self-publishing was...the last choice. Being based in Thailand went against me. English-language book, needing English language book shops to sell it in, same for radio and magazine interviews. I was simply in the wrong place, when my target readership was UK, USA, Europe, Australia, India etc.

I discounted self-publishing unless there was simply no other choice and looked at hybrid publishing, and here is a total minefield. Good ones with integrity are what you seek, but there are an awful lot of bad ones, happy to take your money for what is at best a vanity project.

A vanity project is as it sounds. The desire for a writer to produce something is used by unscrupulous publishers. They offer to take your book 'to print' no matter how unsuitable, or bad it is. This is because they have nothing to lose. no real overhead. no financial outlay. They make a profit from your share of the deal, and if you are lucky enough to start selling books, they take a slice of that, too. A book which is patently unsuitable to publish, but which the author wants to do so, is a 'vanity project'.

I diligently researched a LOT of hybrid publishers in UK, America, India, etc. The ones that were all over my enquiry, when it was obvious they had not had time to read anything were quickly weeded out - vanity publishers. Even those who seemed to take time, well...time to reply at any rate, were researched further.

All the time I was doing this, I was also querying the traditional route. I had had about 18 rejections, plus one asking for more chapters to read (this is hopeful) and another suggesting altering the ending and re-submitting directly. In the main though...nothing, not even a rejection reply.

I had by now a shortlist of 4 hybrid publishers to try, should I get tired of waiting for responses from agents. more by curiosity than anything, I sent off to two of them to see what they might say. One asked for the synopsis and 5 chapters, the other asked for the synopsis and THE ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT and all was duly sent.

The first one then asked for the manuscript - a good sign because they wanted to asses it. I heard nothing from the second one.

Just as I got to 20 rejections, the second hybrid publisher got in touch to say... they liked the manuscript and would I be interested in discussing it further, with a view to printing and publishing it!?

WOW!!

The end result is what I wanted, the route was different.

Now, I had to decide if I wanted to peruse this alternative route or persevere with the agent / tread publisher.

[DrWilly]

Interesting…

[Thai Dhupp]

Interesting…

It gets even better!!

[Thai Dhupp]

MAKING A DECISION

I had just sent off yet another batch of queries to those agents on the traditional publishing route. I was getting that deja vu feeling with the expected responses. Time was ticking along, and once again, I turned to the offer from the hybrid publisher.

I thought...what's to lose? They only want to discuss. I can find out more without any commitment. It's a more positive message than the ones I am getting from any agent, and I dont have anything else to do while I wait for the expected rejection emails.

I took a decision

Look into the hybrid publisher's offer. Get the facts. Get the detail. see what they offer. timescale etc etc etc.

As I said...I dont have anything to lose and the traditional publisher route is still being followed.

I emailed back and waited to see where it would lead me.