Flipping the bird at answers

It’s time to give this blog a kick in the guts, by making it useful.

I’ve been digging in at work and making the most of the cold summer I was welcomed with, and I’m ready to start soliciting book proposals or manuscripts, maybe, depending on the proposal. In particular I’m interested in challenging non-fiction by young, emerging writers, so if you have an idea for a book, please read on.

Soon I will post some more specific ideas about my ideal book proposal, but for now I want to put it out there that a book proposal is more than just a few sample chapters and a synopsis: it is a document that conveys a comprehensive concept of what sort of book the manuscript could become, and how the book might be brought to the attention of its potential readership. And I’d like to get a bit of discussion happening about a trend I’ve noticed.

I don’t know if it’s like this in the big houses, but we usually like it when an author shows the sort of initiative that might help to sell the book. Authors have to sell their books too, and this may as well start early.

While it’s difficult to predict the sales of any given book, and I don’t expect a sales-projection spreadsheet, a little demonstrated awareness of the life of your manuscript in book form will go a long way. That’s because in the independent sector there seems to be a dearth of marketing, sales and publicity personnel – probably because there’s not a lot of cash flowing around to pay for the sort of people whose natural inclination is to sell things – and the result is that authors need to get on board in the sales department.

What do you think of this?

Actually moving units seems to have become a subset of tasks in the process of producing and publishing literature. Marketing is almost a dirty word in some literary circles. And this troubles me immensely because I don’t see the point in slaving over a book (as either an author or an editor) if you can’t be bothered getting it to readers who aren’t already tuned in to the value of reading literature.

I want to find an amazing work of literature, see it through the production process, and then sell the fuck out of it. For shame?

Back to the other point of the post.

Wakefield Press Books

To save you some of the trouble of researching our list: Wakefield publishes primarily non-fiction, and of that, primarily history, memoir, gastronomy (including the unfortunately labelled ‘gastro memoir‘) and DIY books. We also publish literary fiction, something that began to be called life writing (extraordinary stories of ordinary people), and poetry. Oh, and art books – such as those published as part of SALA Festival.

My Interests

To give you an idea of the sort of book I’m looking for, those of my interests that align with Wakefield’s publishing program include: progressive thinking about popular culture, politics, economics, religion, philosophy, tangential history and real-life curiosities; vegetarian cookbooks, especially those that function as part treatise, part guidebook for adopting the lifestyle; youth literature, by which I mean literature by young writers, as defined by this blog; adventurous fiction – so, no landscape fiction or novels about art hoaxes; biographies of outstanding ordinary people; satire and parody.

I worked on most of those linked books above – except for Amore and Amaretti, the DIY books and most of the SALA books – and I enjoyed them all immensely, if that provides another indication of the sort of books I’d like to consider.

Submitting your Proposal

Check out this link, where you’ll find our submission guidelines (which are pretty basic, and mostly common sense) and a postal address. Do not email your proposal. Wakefield is not currently accepting unsolicited manuscripts, but if you’ve read this then, well, yours is not exactly unsolicited. Feel free to contact me at Wakefield with any queries you have. I prefer to answer phones than emails.