From Pitch to Publication

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View books by Carole Blake.

Informative but dangerous in parts. - Rated
Whilst this book contains a good deal of valuable information, aspiring writers should take care not to follow Ms Blake's submission advice too slavishly.
She may wish to recieve a four to ten page synopsis and character biographies but many agents do not. With up to two hundred manuscripts arriving every week they simply do not have the time to wade through this amount of information. It works like this; if your covering letter is inspiring enough they will read your synopsis ( industry standard one single spaced page ), if, and only if, this really catches their imagination will they read the chapters. Most unsolicited manuscripts are never read. Always check with the individual agent for their particular submission requirements.
It is hard to imagine that anyone is cretinous enough to tell an agent "My friends all think it's wonderful", "It's ideal for a Hollywood film", or "You'll be turning down a fortune if you let it get away" but this book will stop you making these, and many other less obvious mistakes. Should you manage to get an agent or publisher ( and it does happen, new writers are taken on all the time, they have to be or else the whole book world would stagnate ) you will find the "Publication" section invaluable.

Lots of Information - Excellent Resource for Writers - Rated
Written by a leading literary agent this book is a valuable source of information.

This book covers everything which a writer should know before they submit their work to an agent – Carole Blake lays it down as it is – agents are busy people, they have stacks of submissions to go through – make sure yours is the best it can be, make sure you comply with agent guidelines etc etc.

But this book also goes further than providing general information on submissions to agents; it provides writers with information on publishing contracts, rights, publicity, royalties and more. The book covers everything that aspiring authors should want to know about having their book published.

The occasional personal story adds even more interest to this book, including snippets of letters of correspondence that Carole Blake has received as an agent, some of which are humours and others make you shake your head at the nerve of some people (but then again writers need nerve right?)

Everything is covered in this book and I found the money aspects particularly interesting. There are a lot of articles in newspapers and magazines about huge author advances but this book shows more of the real story – it provides information on what many authors can expect – and it’s not an advance which is big enough to buy a large house in the country.

Valuable guide, occasionally too prescriptive - Rated
This authoritative guide, by an experienced literary agent, contains advice for would-be authors on how to get books published. This is good, nitty-gritty stuff, including what to include in a submission, how to present your work and how to write a synopsis. There is also much about the book trade, including an excellent section entitled "Does an agent need you?"

I'd give the book top marks except for the fact that the author is rather over-prescriptive. For example, she advocates very lengthy synopses, whereas many other agents prefer them shorter.

Summary: a fine book, but take a second opinion before sending off your precious manuscript.

BLAKE OUT IN A COLD SWEAT - Rated
This book is widely revered as a masterpiece of its kind - invaluable in the extreme, comprehensively knowledgeable, hugely informative, in addition to being the ideal literary vade mecum for anyone hell-bent on getting their unpublished work published. Hey, and so it is - and so it should be too. Because Ms Blake is only joint managing director of top London-based literary agency Blake Friedmann and she obviously knows what she's talking about . . .

'Or does she?' whispered a tiny voice from the bottom of Ms Blake's slush pile. 'Consider, if you will,' the voice persisted, 'Selection Criterion #1 on p. 7 of the book where Ms Blake bitterly complains that "I am regularly offered novels that are 50,000 or 60,000 words."' The voice gave way to an wheezy laugh. 'Oh dearie, dearie me! Well, there's DEATH IN VENICE, THE GREAT GATSBY, and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in the trash can for starters.'

The laughter became a tad more hysterical: 'And on Page 9, you'll find, Ms Blake promulgates Selection Criterion #3: "Is the world that I have created in the novel one my readers will want to spend time in even before they know the story or the characters?" Uh oh! In the trash can with A CLOCKWORK ORANGE again (that unpublishable Mancunian's nothing if not persistent), swiftly followed by BRAVE NEW WORLD, 1984, and THE GRAPES OF WRATH.'

For a time no sound could be heard in the room other than the tumultuous trashing of unpublishable typescripts by the score.

'So,' said the tiny, slush pile shrouded voice as Ms Blake collapsed with Repetitive Strain Injury: 'I wish you better luck with Ms Blake and all her house than Thomas Mann, Scott Fitzgerald, Anthony Burgess, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, John Steinbeck - or I ever had, though I confess to finding it mighty reassuring to enjoy such exalted company for once in my life, all thanks to Ms Blake.'

Market forces are everything - Rated
Blake is certainly on top of her game in the world of commercial publishing. If you have no or little experience of UK publishing then this book will give you many insights into the mechanics of getting published in an extremely competitive market. But be warned, Blake is evidently a child of Thatcher. The basic premise of this book is that if you are not prepared to sell your literary soul to the pressures of market forces then you can forget all about being a published author. To be fair, Blake does make it clear that this guide is aimed at those writing commercial fiction, but such importance is placed upon marketing yourself and ensuring that your writing conforms to certain generic standards that the impression given to aspiring writers is that they simply need to fit themselves and their prose into a greasy little mould that will ensure they (+ their agent and publisher) make lots of cash. Because, consistent with a Thatcherite ideology, this is what writing in 2004 is apparently all about. Image, conformity and an ethos that kowtows to the idea that the only possible reason for writing anything is to milk the punters for as much money as possible. This is a dangerous Pop Idolist principle, 'commercial fiction' or not. Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Umberto Eco, Iain Sinclair, George Orwell... none would stand a chance at Blake's agency, especially the latter because his manuscript would have smelled of smoke. There are lots of publishing opportunities for writers creating good prose, but if this were the only 'How To' book you read on the subject you would be inclined to give up unless the goal were a top 20 bestseller. There is simply too much negativity running through the book, coupled by an assurance that good writing is worthless unless it is commercially viable. The advice on manuscript submissions and presentation is sound enough, but nothing that a flick through an edition of the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook won't tell you. Blake is probably congratulating herself on all the spondoolies she's made out of gullible unpublished authors buying this book (I borrowed it!), but that's ok because it's a dog eat dog world out there and she's not got where she is today... etc. etc. My advice is to go down to your local 2nd-hand bookshop, with the money you've saved by not buying this book, and purchase a recent copy of the Artists' and Writers' Yearbook and a couple of novels by Kazuo Ishiguro and Aldous Huxley. You'll learn a lot more.