Why Did That Book Get Published?

‘If he/she can get published so can I’. This is an assertion I regularly hear aspiring authors say. The brasher ones put it more bluntly. ‘That book (often some international best-seller) is a pile of crap. My book is a million times better than that.’

I think anyone who has ever found themselves thinking like this would be well advised to dedicate some time to reading books that they really don’t like and considering the question, ‘Why did this get published?’ And I mean really considering the question, not simply resorting to some easy formula like, ‘It’s because the general public is stupid,’ or 'he/she obviously knew someone in publishing.'

Reading books that you think are really clever, really well written or really profound, is an important thing to do. It feeds your soul. But reading books that thoroughly irritate you, that seem ponderous, or trashy or impossible to believe in, is also important. It takes you out of your comfort zone, it makes you think hard about the audience for books (i.e. other people). It teaches you lessons you won’t learn in any other way.

I’m not saying it’s easy. Once, following my own advice, when I was obliged to travel from London to Newcastle and back by train in one day, I took a copy of Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer and nothing else. I was determined to get to grips with it. But I failed. In the end I found that I preferred to stare out of the rain-streaked window for seven hours rather than lose myself in Jeffrey Archer’s prose.

Nevertheless I still think that reading books that you would never have published yourself if you had been in charge of the publishing house is an extremely useful exercise. Because the truth is that there is always a reason why a book gets published and it is not, no matter how much you might want to believe it, because the author is sleeping with, related to, lives next door to, or went to school with the editor. Or that people are stupid. It's because the author is doing something right. You just haven't spotted it yet.

Reader Makes Book Trailer

I found this trailer that one of my readers made for The Hollow People. The writing isn't easy to read but I was well impressed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRb8Nqae6Zc