The Long Road to Publication - Part One

When First Page Competition Winner Andy Smith contacted us to ask our suggestions for what next, we gave him a bunch of ideas and had one of our own. Why not share a diary with Words with JAM readers, detailing his progress from competition winner to published author? Happily he agreed. 
You can read Andy's winning First Page here 


I’m Andy Smith, the still shell-shocked winner of the First Page competition. I’ve officially got a good opening page, plus some great feedback from Alison Morton. But how do I know if the rest of the novel is any good? I could enter more competitions: Best Second Page, Best Third Page, etc. I reckon I would need 194 more competitions to get the end of the book, which might take a while. So I think I’ll try a different approach.

I’ve been working on editing, tidying up, sorting out and general polishing of the whole novel (not just the first page) for quite some time now. I’ve got a number of beta readers who’ve provided comments – good and bad – which I’ve incorporated. And, most importantly, I’m a member of a writing group who provide serious critiques and criticisms when required.

(Aside: in my humble opinion, if you want to improve your writing, the best thing you can do is join a writing group. Pick which one you join carefully though: not one where everybody goes “Yes Mabel, that’s wonderful” to everything they hear. You want one where people will point out flaws and tell you honestly when things aren’t working. I’m in South Manchester Writers’ Workshop, something I mention as a thank you to the folks there rather than as a plug – we haven’t got room for any more members at the moment! However, there are lots of other groups out there. End of aside.)

As a result of all the above, I think my whole novel is now in a sufficiently good state to try and get published. That’s the next step. One giant leap sideways for crab kind.

Important decision time. Do I send it off to agents and publishers and fight the uphill battle against rejection letters? Or do I self-publish, and fight the (possibly even more uphill) battle of making it stand out from the 47 billion other self-published books?

Answer: dunno. I think I’ll try both, and pick the brains of the good people at Words With Jam for their ideas on the self-publishing route. As you’ve probably gathered from the competition results, this is a comic fantasy novel which mixes a few other things together, and thereby gives agents a bit of a dilemma. (Doubtless more on that in future posts.) But if I self-publish I’ve got to sort out a professional editor, someone to do the cover, etc, etc. Why do I get the feeling this where the hard part starts?

Another thing I’m going to need to do is consider a pseudonym. When my Mum and Dad were naming their children they never thought about one of them trying to be an author. Hence I’ve been lumbered with ‘Andy Smith’, which is about as noticeable as ‘A. Nonymous.’ I could try Eric Blair, perhaps? Dorothy Parker? Peter Parker? My spider sense is telling me that none of them would be right.

Watch this space.


About Andy:

I was born in Liverpool but now live in Manchester.
The people there are great, but we don’t talk about football.

I work as a project manager for a software company, which really is every bit as exciting as it sounds.

Writing is what keeps me sane.