Eoin Purcell

A heavy days meetings
A very long new title meeting on the Friday of the bank holiday meeting is not what I had in mind, but there was much to cover! Some of it good, some bad, some promising! I’m always stressed to hell before these meetings and pretty tired after them, but this time some thoughts bubbled to the surface, that I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, but a little reiteration can’t hurt!

A word (or two) of advice if I may to authors

1) Always, always, always include you place of birth, your place of current residence and your profession in your submission letter (or your cv). You would be amazed how many times I get asked those three questions at New Title Meetings.

2) Please think of at least a tag line or snappy descriptions for your book (fiction or non-fiction) when submitting. Yes these are cheesy and might well be over selling the book, but do it, it’ll help your commissioning editor when they pitch the title.

3) Always include an image in the submission. Commissioning editors don’t care but sales people do!

4) Know what genre you fit in! Don’t tell me its indefinable, that just means I’ll have a harder time selling it. If you don’t like pigeon holing, draw some obscure comparison, Milton crossed with Thompson, whatever, just don’t claim after centuries of people writing that you are unique, it’s unlikely to be true*!

5) If your editor accepts digital submissions, send them digitally! I don’t know how often a slice of the text pasted into my proposal has served to showcase the talent of an author (both in fiction and non-fiction) or highlight a key selling point, this is so much easier to do when the text is in a word/rtf or text file!

That’s it! Keep submitting!
Eoin

* You may have lots to offer and be a new, fresh voice, but your work will trod old ground and plough old furrows. That is not to say people will not love it and thank you a million times for writing! Just know your parameters!