I thought it would be great to have his perspective that first time authors could benefit from.

Abhijit: What were you looking for when you commissioned those authors?

Chapal Mehra: I think some of the better known writers that I have commissioned at various times include Arum Maira, Rama Bijapurkar, Kaushik Basu, Santosh Desai and  Jerry Rao. Not all these books came to fruition but those that did were quite successful.

I think the fundamental qualities  that one looks for in an author is a deep understanding and passion for the ideas that they want to write on, an innovative perspective on the subject and a reasonably good writing style along with a fair bit of flexibility. New ideas are very, very important  as is context which makes it relevant to the immediate market that you are addressing. A book as you know is a collaborative process. A writer entirely left on their own is often insular. Unless of course, s/he is an absolute genius. But how many of those exist?

Abhijit: As a writer how does one know which publishing house is the right one for me?

It works differently for different genres but a few simple rules apply.

A natural point is that the publisher should a considerable presence in the market you wish to address. Every brand, however big, has specializations or sub brands. Make sure you are with the right brand which has the infrastructure to bring you to your reader.  A big brand which is not player in the area you are writing on is useless for you . For eg. An academic book is well-regarded when it comes from a university press instead of say Penguin.  The next, of course, is that the publisher should have substantial content or similar books like yours, for eg. you cannot do an engineering book with a social science publisher . It would be lost. So having a companion list is important. Having a companion list ensures that the subject area gets enough attention by marketing and promotion and also your book rides along with other books. You also need to look at what the publishers strongest points are – editorial, marketing or sales? You have to understand your partners strengths and weaknesses and what they can provide you best.

Finally, your publishing house and editor have to believe in the idea that you wish to write on. It has to be a combined passion of sorts. You cannot start your first book with someone who doesn’t share your excitement. The sad thing is that in India this paddling pool is tiny.

Abhijit: Should the first time writers have agents?

Chapal Mehra: Sure. If you can find one you like and who delivers for you. Its tricky especially in India. You need to know the following : What is the role of the agent? What do you want them to do ? What do you see them providing are all things that need to be discussed before you embark on the agent relationship. It also depends on the agent you get.

Whenever I have acted as an agent I draft a strategy with the writer before we sign anything and make it clear to them what it is that I can deliver. And there is usually a follow up plan . As an agent the fun for me is to over deliver. I am also brutally frank with authors whose work I don’t think has international audience. Its better of they hate you now rather than later. We start with clear goals and work towards them instead of having some hazy idea of making you rich and famous.

Writers often overestimate the service that agents can provide. Every agent is not going to take you international with a  big fat advance. And really do you deserve that? Also you must learn from other examples worldwide. How many authors travel internationally across the world to you? Does everyone have that potential? Clearly not

Before you get an agent, you need to be sure and clear about what you want the agent to do for you. There are a lot of editorial inputs that agents can give. They can also open the right doors for you in the publishing companies and advise you on the appropriate marketing and publicity strategy. But there are agents and agents so please be sure what you want from them .

Abhijit: How should a writer choose an agent?

Chapal Mehra: Like I said earlier, before you choose anyone be objective and determine for yourself what you want for your book. If you are not Murkami, Ishiguro or Rushdie you need to be a little bit realistic in the goals you set for your work.

So for starters, your vision of the book and the agent’s vision of YOUR book have to match. You have to agree on who the primary audience is, where it should be published and how it should be marketed. Again its like a long-term relationship. You need to be sure you want the same things and agree on a  common set of goals and these can include things such as specific deliverables such as advances and marketing  .

And in case you don’t know what you want, then you have to be guided by your agent but also do your little bit of research. Agents are like all other consultants, some deliver exactly what you want, some deliver more, some just don’t deliver. Remember the list of deliverables that you draw up helps the agent and you. Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel by accident –he planned it.

Abhijit: What are the most common mistakes first time authors make? How should one avoid doing those?

Chapal Mehra: Oh they are endless:

1. Wrong agent
2. Wrong publisher
3. No idea of what they wanted for their book except that it  should get published
4. No idea of the terms of the agreement they signed
5. No idea of their intellectual property subclauses
6. Not enough discussion on how the book will be marketed and promoted

Most assume that the publisher is doing them a favor by publishing their book. Hence they refuse to ask any questions and later complain about how they were tricked. This is at heart a business transaction. So you need to be sure what you are getting into. No one is doing you a favor.  It is also an intellectual transaction so you need to be doubly sure that your ideas are cared for and promoted.

That having been said, first time authors can also be real nut cases. Some of them think that the Nobel Prize for literature is theirs and drive their agents and editors nuts with questions queries and endless heckling. There is a limit to everything . I always tell such authors if you think you are such a genius. Go elsewhere. And truthfully, when such a genius arrives every editor or publisher puts up with their tantrums. So if I am not putting up with yours. You should take the hint.

Abhijit: What are some of the watchouts for first time writers when they sign a contract with a publishing firm?

Chapal: Most professional publishing firms have standard contracts which they are not open to amending. It is the way they do business and these cannot be altered to every author’s requirement. In fact they are mostly standardized across organizations with a few changes here and there. As a first time author you need to know what you get into a contract with the publishing firm for :

Copyright: Understand the difference between copyright and  the right to publish.

What territory are you signing the book deal for? Do you want to keep US and UK or Europe rights for yourself?

Please check the royalty clause. Are you happy with what the standard royalty is ? Usually it’s the same across publishing firms

Please check the subsidiary rights.  Do you want to give up or keep –translation rights, film rights, tv series rights etc. In most cases I would advise its best to let the publishing company keep these unless you want to do something with them or you think it will have enormous potential which you have a strategy to exploit.

If its an advance contract what are your dates of delivery? What are the conditions associated with non- or late delivery?

Its always good to discuss the contract with your editor to also understand why the organization is offering the contract that it is . Most large professional publishing firms are not out to rob you. But its important for you to understand their thinking.

Abhijit: What are the typical amounts payable as advance to writers. How does one get these million dollar advances that one hears of?

Chapal: Before we discuss an advance lets understand the nature of it. An advance is a monetary commitment to a writers work. This work is a product that the publisher hopes to sell. The advance is built on the foundation that the book will sell in certain numbers. Some authors labour under the impression that large advances are always doled out . Its only a fraction of writers that get such advances. It depends on what genre, the potential and the ability of a publisher to pay. Some advances from international publishers seem big because you multiplied them by 50 really! Its not too high in India unless you are a well-established writer or the book has huge potential. It can range from Rs40,000 to a few lakhs . In any case, these huge advances are only possible if the mathematics are done properly.  Most standard advances in fact are adjustable against future royaltyThere isn’t a standard strategy to getting that multimillion dollar advance. It depends on the potential of your work and the capacity of your agent. I know of people who have written to a big publishing firm directly and been offered reasonable advances because their work is good. others usually get it through agents.  So there isnt a single strategy. And what are multi-million dollar advances? I million dollars is the equal of 5 crores in India .Which Indian writer has received these recently? Only a handful …

——————–

My favorite website in this respect would be http://www.advicetowriters.com/ They have loads of stuff you will read and learn from. Must read.

Should you have an agent and such vexing questions answered here http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article611600.ece

I found this article useful Ten rules for writing fiction

We have all heard about being separated from each other by 6 degrees of separation. With some people you wish the degrees of separation would be 600 instead and less than six for the ones you are desperate to meet. The group that started the website at 6bridges.com (their byline says it is “An exclusive global community of Indian Professionals”) did it to connect Indian professionals across the globe. The site focuses on 6 key areas (another six) : Career growth, entrepreneurship, Re-skilling, money management, leisure and professional networking. We got chatting about this and that. Let us cross the 6bridges:

In an exclusive chat with 6bridges below, Abhijit talks about how he decided to write a book, his journey in pursuing it, and among other things his alma mater – XLRI- and how it has influenced him.

6bridges: You have said earlier that the first time you thought about writing a book was in May 1997 in Mumbai. That was when a friend of yours gave you a book. You started with an opening thought from where the idea of writing germinated. How was the journey in terms of pushing yourself to write, face obstacles, time constraints of having a regular job, the uncertainties of getting it published, and then the joy of seeing people buy in print etc. Can you talk us through your experiences as a professional who was also writing a book?
Abhijit: Talk about serendipity! A friend had gifted me a thick notebook when I was in Mumbai. I was watching the famous rains of Mumbai one lazy afternoon and on impulse wrote the following lines, “I do not know why I landed in this corporate jungle. Why I chose to do Human Resources Development. Why I did not decide to stop playing a game which I neither understood nor had any desire to learn. In fact, I did not even start off being in Human Resources.”

Months later I picked it up and read those lines again and just went ahead to write the first chapter. By which time the story and characters had started to shape up. There were long stretches when I wrote nothing and then would write for a full day. The story kept moving. By which time I had relocated to Kuala Lumpur. I was traveling extensively. I used the time at airports to write. The notebook had given way to a laptop. Very often when I would start writing, the earlier drafts did not make sense. Halfway through the novel, my laptop crashed and I started writing the story all over again. One day in Sep 04, the story felt complete. By this time I had been transferred to the US and like so many first time authors I too had to really struggle to find a publisher long distance. The book was launched in August 05. Seeing my book in a bookstore is a high but also makes me feel like I don’t belong there yet.

6bridges: You have been a part of the generation that has seen India evolve from the rather inactive 1980s to the post liberalization era. Do you think much has changed from the way characters like Abbey, Rusty, Ayesha and others went through their experiences in that era? If you were to etch their characters again, would they be the same as they were then?
Abhijit: The Post liberalization era has changed some things for sure. Today Abbey would have perhaps serenaded Ayesha or Keya on Facebook or sent them an SMS confirming the rendezvous. Who knows? Rusty might have been a blogger with a fan following perhaps. Yet, apart from these changes there is a certain commonality of being a college student in India that is very universal. That has not changed. That probably explains why the books appeal equally to parents and their college kids.

6bridges: Picking up from the earlier question, how well do you think your first book, set in the early 1980s, has been received among the younger audience some of whom may not even have been born at that time.
Abhijit: As I mentioned, the story and the characters are fairly generic and the characters are fairly archetypal. The archetypes of The Child, The Hero, The Wise Old Man, The Trickster… all can be seen in the different characters that cut across the two novels.

Every class has its version of the guitar strumming Arunesh, the eternal flirt, crazy professors, bad food in the hostel… those resonate with the readers who are living that experience across hundreds of colleges even today.

6bridges: There has been a spate of books written by Indian authors over the last few years, including books written by alums from IITs, IIMs, XLRI, NITs and others. Considering the success of this genre, would you say that Indian writers will find it easier to publish now than before? How was your experience in finding a publisher when you wrote Mediocre But Arrogant?
Abhijit: Indian writers and Indian fiction have both hit mainstream. But for most first time authors it is still a very long wait. There are loads of writers chasing the big names of publishing. So the demand supply equation remains loaded against the majority. It is probably easier for a small time publisher to give you a break than to keep wait for the big banner to say yes to your words.

If you are not waiting for the hefty advance from a publisher and are happy just to have people read your story then putting it on a blog is what one should do. If an agent or a publisher finds your story compelling they will reach you to hand over that advance royalty in person!

6bridges: What was the most difficult part in writing the book? How long did it take for you to complete?
Abhijit: The most difficult part for me is to find the happy intersection of time and inspiration. They rarely happen at the same time. I took seven years to write the first novel and three to write the second one. I also write for my website at http://abhijitbhaduri.com. I have learnt to write whenever there is an opportunity – especially while waiting at the airports.

6bridges: Do you see the books to have finished exactly as you thought about them when you started writing the beginnings? Did the story evolve with the flow or did you craft the entire edifice beforehand? Were there moments when you told yourself – well, I think I could have said it differently. Did you encounter a writer’s block anytime, and how did you deal with it?
Abhijit: I write in short bursts and after long gaps. So what made great sense as a story often seems horribly wrong when I read it again. I first put down the basic story and thereafter try to chisel it over a period of time. Writer block is the equivalent of putting on weight. Neither of them is good and yet I have a tendency to experience both (to put it mildly)! I try to build some discipline by spending some serious writing time on holidays, weekends or vacations. I hope to achieve the same discipline with my exercise routine.

6bridges: There are many people from some of these premier schools who are going back in time and writing about their days in a professional school. Why do you think more alums from these schools, as opposed to alums from other schools, are writing about their years there. Do you think it’s solely driven by the fact that people are curious to know what’s going on in there? Or is it also the fact that there is more self belief and fewer inhibitions reflected in writing about a premier school one went to, speaking strictly from the author’s perspective?
Abhijit: People write about whatever story comes naturally to them. As long as there is a market for that story, there will be someone ready to publish it. I am sure there is plenty of shelf space waiting for a great story about a law firm, a dentist’s chair, a musical prodigy… the list goes on and on. If told in an interesting manner any setting works.

6bridges: Let us go down the memory lane here! Do you visit your alma mater – XLRI – often? What do you find has changed the most since you left two decades ago? What makes you most nostalgic about those days with your friends? If there was one thing you could do again on the campus, what would that be? What do you cherish most from your XLRI days (We have members from those institutes in our community who would love to know about this)?
Abhijit: I do visit XLRI from time to time. The campus looks different with loads of new buildings in place of the cricket field, basketball court and tennis courts. That saddens me. We were a much small number of students and so got a chance to know almost everyone of our batch really well. I see far less interaction between the students and the support staff of the Institute – at least that’s what it seems at first bounce.

Our train rides back home during vacations were memorable. There are a million memories of the two amazing years there. I don’t think I will clear the entrance exam again – can’t get lucky twice!

6bridges: You write about how during one’s life, everything other than work impacts you. “So it is just not your professional calibre but your ability to make small talk, choose the right wine, make the right golfing buddies and all that jazz which determines how high you get in the business ladder.” How much of your observations about people and characters that you include in your books have emerged from your work in professional life?
Abhijit: If the writing seems honest it has to come from one’s beliefs and experiences. As a HR professional I have a chance to observe corporate life very closely. While the story is not autobiographical, what is depicted there is very close to reality that has been interwoven into fiction. Anyone who has worked in corporate India will be able to relate to the situations given in Married But Available. While it is fiction, yet it is very close to real life.

6bridges: By another strand of logical inference, how much has the book made Abhijit Bhaduri after he made the book? To elaborate on this, in what way do you think writing the books has helped you acquire a richer perspective of everyday professional life? Has the book helped you internalize things better, in any way and evolve better? What has been your biggest learning from the efforts in writing the book?
Abhijit: The books have helped me connect to so many people who I would never have had a chance to meet. Thanks to the book, I have got in touch with friends from school I had lost touch with. The feedback from readers has been very encouraging. They have been ever so forthcoming with their suggestions and ideas and that shaped my second novel in more ways than one. I still consider myself a novice in the world of writing. I am still learning the craft. I have a long way to go. The feedback of readers makes a huge difference to an author.

6bridges: How do you think being an HR professional has helped in building characters, plots and intrigues? Do you feel being an HR professional helps to get a realistic grip about peoples emotions, reactions and interactions.
Abhijit: Being in HR, one gets to talk to a lot of people. Everyone has some really interesting stories to tell. Besides HR is a profession where you work with people’s dreams – their job, career, money, ambition, failings and of course the working of a corporation from the inside. All in all it is a heady combination for telling a story. Truth is stranger than fiction for sure.

6bridges: With a full time job at Microsoft, how do you balance your passion for creative writing alongside it? What’s your favourite way to unwind apart from creative writing? Do you believing in gathering thoughts about writing, ideas etc during the course of other pursuits outside work and writing?
Abhijit: I enjoy writing. I love traveling. I always land up meeting really interesting people when I travel. When I hear their stories, somewhere I am sure it all gets stored and springs up when I write. I unwind with my family or by listening to music. I am big fan of Hindi film music.

6bridges: How much did the initial success prod you to write what you prefer to call ‘the second book in the MBA’ series? Would you have continued writing if your first book failed? What are your plans for the MBA series in future?
Abhijit: The reader’s response is a critical factor for me. If they had been luke warm in their response I am sure my enthusiasm would have been dampened. Although I still see myself as a novice who is still learning to take baby steps, appreciation of the readers has helped me to be a little more confident. I am currently working on my next novel which will be a crime thriller. Maybe I should call it Mind Blowing Accident and make it a part of the MBA series!!

Go to the 6bridges site and rest of the interview

Youngsters who read Subramanian’s book for insights into the banking world might be in for a bit of a shock. Following the rise of two IIM graduates to the top hierarchy of an American bank, the steamy novel is full of organisational politics, sexual harassment, fraud and a slimy direct selling agent who doubles as a pimp for the bank’s bosses and wields more power than the CEO.

The creative side of advertising has always tended to produce novelists, script writers and lyricists. Some hold on to their jobs, like Chauhan, while others move out. “People who join the profession are those who want to express themselves in some way,” says Jaideep Varma, who quit advertising after 12 years to become a full-time writer. “But then they realise that advertising is not going to lead to any kind of self expression. That’s why you find so many ad professionals moving into other creative areas.”

In Local, Varma’s debut novel, the hero is a fresher in a Mumbai ad agency who sleeps in local trains after work — an interesting idea which, alas, doesn’t actually work. The parts set in the ad agency, however , work quite well, which proves that it helps to have some experience of what you’re writing about.

Abhijit Bhaduri, Human Resources (HR) director of Microsoft India, has chosen to spin his novels around the HR profession rather than any particular industry. A graduate of XLRI, Bhaduri set his first novel, Mediocre But Arrogant, in the ‘Management Institute of Jamshedpur’ , from where his hero graduates to land his first job in HR.

His second book, Married But Available is about the protagonist’s early years in Balwanpur Industries, an Indian company that’s been taken over by a multinational. The book is sprinkled with HR gyan and Bhaduri, who has worked with Tata Steel, Colgate and Pepsico, says it gives his characters credibility: “The professional and personal lives of my characters aren’t separate, they’re wholly meshed.”

One of the biggest selling Indian novels of all time is Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans, written at the fag end of the license raj, when the middle class Indian dream was to immigrate to the USA. Utkarsh Rai, managing director of Infinera India, published a collection of Hindi short stories titled Reteela Safar after returning to the country ten years ago. “It was a theme people could relate to in those days,” he says. “Now the focus has shifted to Indians in India rather than Indians abroad.”

The big fans of the corporate novel today are Indians who are not into serious literature. They once had to look to writers like Arthur Hailey for industry-dramas but now have the option of picking up an Indian novel they can relate to. “Middle class Indians define themselves through their careers,” says Amitabha Bagchi, IIT professor and author of the novel Above Average. “They would naturally enjoy reading stories about the pitfalls of professional life.”

With liberal doses of romance, action and intrigue , some might say corporate novelists depict their work life to be far more exciting than it actually is. But one industry that always lends itself to juicy fiction is hotels. Four decades ago, Mani Sankar Mukherji wrote the best-selling Bengali novel Chowringhee, about the goings-on in a five star Kolkata hotel as told by a maudlin clerk.

Now Advaita Kala’s written the delightful Almost Single, in which her sassy heroine, a guest relations manager in a Delhi hotel, ‘tolerates her job, hates her boss and bonds big-time with her friends.’ The book is replete with hilarious vignettes from hotel work-life and Kala admits she’s drawn heavily on her seven years of experience with the Oberoi group hotels and the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai. “My experiences were even more outrageous than what’s in the book. I’ve actually had to tone it down slightly,” she says

Almost Single has since sold over 50,000 copies and along with The Zoya Factor, it’s set the ‘chick lit’ genre rolling in India. “Men will never admit to reading it,” laughs Kala. “At the Jaipur Literary Festival last month, there were lots of girls who came upto me to get their copy of the book signed, but there was only one guy. And he said it was for his girl friend.”

One man the new-gen corporate novelists owe much to is Chetan Bhagat, the author one who opened up the market for this genre. Bhagat’s debut book, Five Point Someone, was set in IIT-Delhi , his own alma mater, but since then, he’s moved to writing novels that are based on research rather than personal experience. “I enjoy the research,” he says. “I learnt so much about call centres while writing One Night and I used google heavily for cricket history in The 3 Mistakes Of My Life.”

Does the Deutsche Banker ever plan to write a novel set in the banking world? “Not while I’m still in the profession,” says Bhagat, categorically. Which leaves the field more or less open to HSBC’s Ravi Subramanian, who is currently working on another novel called Devil In Pinstripes, which features bank collection agents who drive customers to suicide. “It’s important that I stick to writing about banking,” he says. “I want to establish my corporate novelist pedigree before I get into other kinds of writing.”

And finally, how are the corporates who are the subjects of these novels reacting to the trend? Kala, who now works with Time magazine, says the hotel industry has been hugely supportive of Almost Single, laying out the red carpet wherever she’s had a launch: “The ITC Kakatiya in Hyderabad, ISTA in Bangalore, all hosted my launch events free. The staff there made me feel I’m one of their own.”

At HSBC, Malini Thadani, head of public affairs, was the one entrusted with onerous responsibility of going through the manuscript of If God Was A Banker prior to its publication. She wielded the censor’s scissors in six places, cutting out all but one reference to HSBC. “My job was to ensure the book didn’t damage the institution. In the end, we accepted it as an imaginative and entertaining work of fiction,” she says.

Once it was published, however, HSBC sportingly backed the novel, with country head Naina Lal Kidwai launching the book at Crossword. After all the coflict and tension, an altogether happy ending.

Read this article on Economic Times website 

Deccan Herald reviewed Married But Available in its Sunday paper dated Jan 25, 2009. Veena Pradeep says

“You may however be left with this vague feeling that this is more of a guy’s book rather than a gal’s. If writings of women about and for women that are also read by men are called Chick Lit, what would writings of men about and for men that are also read by women be called? In a way, Abhijit Bhaduri and his ilk may have spawned this new genre of Indian fiction. Can we call it Guy Lit for want of a better term?”
I generally get a little wary about classifying books, music, movies into genres and compartments. It is the equivalent of stereotypes that makes us pre-judge a person. We have a liberal list of stereotypes about countries, ethnic groups, gender and any other grouping possible.  Each stereotype puts a set of limitations around what we expect that group to be capable of or not even when it is a positive expectation. When it works in our favor we don’t mind the categorization and yet bristle with indignity when the grouping puts us at a disadvantage.

So when my book is classified as “guy lit” it automatically puts me at a disadvantage. Women will no longer read the book I fear. That knocks off half the human race from my readership and I will never make my millions in royalty . I ask Rascal Rusty for advice. He tells me that it is a good thing for my novel to be classified as “guy lit” because that will make more women read it. They would want to know how guys think. Who does not want to understand how the men in their world think or feel especially about them. I certainly hope he is right. 

Try this out for yourself. When you go to the bookstore the next time, politely enquire if they have more women buying the books or men. If the cashier is able to get past political correctness, you will hear what the NPR article  confirms what I have always noticed.

See what I mean, more women read fiction than men. Some biographies also may be passed off as fiction I suppose – just trying to defend the guys. Hey more guys than gals have read Harry Potter – doesn’t that count? The article hypothesises that women are comfortable with a wider range of emotions than men and perhaps they are buying the books for the men back home to read. Is that true for what you have seen?

“Surveys consistently find that women read more books than men, especially fiction. Explanations abound, from the biological differences between the male and female brains, to the way that boys and girls are introduced to reading at a young age.” says NPR. It further goes on to say, “The typical woman read nine books in a year, compared with only five for men. Women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography.”

Limiting as it is, a stereotype also helps us make sense of a really complex world and gives us the comfort of knowing what to expect. Classifying anything into groups makes it easy for shoppers to choose. So the person pushing the shopping cart around in the mall looks for the signage in the aisles that announces the contents on the shelves. In a library we like to make it easy for ourselves to choose the book we are looking for by identifying the classification. There can be some howlers in that. Games People Play – the 1964 classic by Eric Berne on the Psychology of Human Relationships was classified initially in the Sports section of our library until the Professor of Psychology intervened.

The final verdict: We may not like getting pigeonholed but it finally helps us make choices.

You have the novel ready. And you are now ready to count the steady flow of royalty. You have practised the odd moment of living it up like a rich person. So why is the publisher not grabbing your manuscript.

Heck – that’s the reality check. Your publisher needs to feel that your manuscript is going to be the next Harry Potter or whatever last made a few good millions – for the publisher. Yes… you read that right. The publisher is really trying to gauge the readership of your novel. So in a very simplistic manner, they are not really trying to figure out if your plotline was intriguing or not. They need to know how many people are likely to BUY your novel.

How do you find a publisher?

Option 1: Get yourself invited to a dinner party where publishers are hanging out. Then try and strike up a conversation with one of ‘em. NOT RECOMMENDED.

Option 2: Go to a literary festival or a writers’ workshop. Helps to get you in the queue to pick up a few visiting cards of publishers and employees of publishing houses. Try and listen in to the panel discussions. That always helps. Listen to other writers and editors and publishers.

Option 3: Find yourself an agent. In US they have a book called the Writers Market. You can buy it off Amazon.com or a bookstore. That lists basically, which publisher is publishing the genre of novels that yours fits in. They list names of agents who will represent you to the publishers. Here is an interview with Eric Simonoff - the agent who represented Jhumpa Lahiri. Some of the agents want a “Reading Fee” – a hefty sum of money to read your manuscript with no obligations. Heck, it is a tough world.

Option 4: Keep sending the manuscript to the publishers directly. Most websites have addresses where you can mail the manuscript. Some want electronic version, some want the hardcopy, some want a pink bulldog to go with it. Whatever they want and in whatever format they want it – you increase the probability of someone reading it if you follow instructions.

And I don’t know if I should say this to you, but… well… be prepared for the famous “Rejection Slip”. I was told by an engineer that the number of rejection slips will always be one less than the number of manuscripts you have mailed, since one of them will be the acceptance slip. In mathematical terms the rejection slips will be n-1 if n is the number of manuscripts mailed. Well – he was wrong. I got more rejection slips than manuscripts mailed (one publisher sent me two of those pre-printed ones).

See sample Rejection Slip below

Dear

Your writing has a refreshing style and the plotline was really gripping and fabulous.

However… – this where it gets creative –

a) we have just stopped publishing this genre/ category of novels/ poems

b) we are understaffed and will not be able to pay attention to the manuscript for the next five years/ sixty months – whichever is later!

c) you have just missed the submission deadline for the next five years.

Yours sincerely (if THAT is sinecerely, I wonder what is not)