The Line Between Success and Failure in Publishing

This originally was going to be my acceptance speech for the Aurealis Awards, but my wife talked me out of it, saying it it was ‘too sad’. I’d been nominated in the SF Novella and Novel categories. I didn’t think I’d win, of course (though I desperately hoped to), but if you’re nominated you need to have something prepared. And if I had to bloody well speak in front of an audience, I wanted to direct it at the new and struggling authors in the crowd, those still waiting for that first big break.

As it happens, I fucken won. Best novel. It was awesome. In the speech I ended up giving, I spoke of the importance of telling Australian stories, and celebrating them.

I meant it. But this, below, was the other one. The one that was too sad:

I gave up on 36 Streets. Trunked it. Dumped in the remainder bin of failed drafts. I didn’t think I was good enough to write what I aspired to write – a cyberpunk novel featuring a damaged Vietnamese/Australian protagonist, set in Vietnam, exploring themes of technological alienation, colonialism, and the weaponization of trauma, and yet containing ice-cool tech and being thrilling to read, all the while. Sounded like a tall order, no?

But a year or so later I changed my mind, thankfully, and extracted the book from the virtual trunk, and finished it.

Sent it to my agent. Posh English bloke. Some big clients. He hated it. He hated it and boy, didn’t he tell me how. Three pages (it was an email, so let’s say three screens) of invective. I read it twice, sick to the stomach. I showed it to my partner – a tough, no-nonsense, feminist human rights lawyer – she cried. I deleted that email, but I’ll never forget the last line, seared into my memory (the following is best read in a toffy English accent): “…and finally, Tim, whatever led you to believe anyone would wish to waste ten hours of their life reading your book?”

A gut punch.

But what to do? I had nothing published then, not even my collection. Some short stories, but no books. I wanted a career in traditional publishing, and I saw this agent as the key to my career. The gatekeeper, the opener of doors, the doer of deals.

So I thought about it. For some time, actually. Weeks. I tried to convince myself to put the incident behind me, to move forward in a professional manner, to write a book the agent would love.

But in the end I did the only thing I could do. Should do. I dumped his arse.

You can’t have dickheads like that in your life. Maybe he was having a bad day when he wrote it, I don’t know. We all have bad days, and I’ve had more than most. But I doubt he would have written those words to an established writer. I simply don’t believe he would have showed someone more powerful than himself this level of disrespect. It’s the publishing equivalent of the type of person who treats service staff like shit (because they can, that’s why), and those aren’t my sort of people.

So I got another agent. John Jarrold. Another English bloke, but the other kind: professional, no-nonsense, unsentimental. I liked him.

More importantly, John loved the book and sent it out to the world.

But the world didn’t like it so much. They all rejected it. Some of them were ‘nice’ rejections, John assured me (nice rejections are those where they say the writing is very good, and want to see more of your work in the future. I tend not to trust these types of responses, but if they are saying it to my agent, and he believes it, well, maybe it was true). Fifteen or so rejections later, it didn’t feel so nice.

Fifteen rejections is a lot these days, insofar as ‘traditional’ publishers have been rationalised and re-rationalised, and there ain’t so many left anymore. I’m not quite sure how to precisely define a traditional publisher in this context, but at minimum, I’d put it this way: big enough to make it worthwhile for an agent to approach them.

Eighteen months had passed. I’d made peace with the fact that 36 Streets was never going to sell, and was working on the next book. The world kept turning.

Until the very last publisher we’d tried – Titan UK – said yes. The managing editor, George Sandison, liked the work and wanted to give it a chance. I was understandably ecstatic.

That glow faded over time, of course. It was a further eighteen months from acceptance to publication day. I won’t go into the process in-between, other than to say there was a lot of editing, and an enormous effort on my part to promote the book (interviews, festivals, articles, panels, everything).   

Three years after beginning the submission process, the book finally clawed its way out into the world. To rave reviews from readers, from other authors (Adrian Tchaikovsky, Richard Morgan, many others), from critics. The Times of London praised it. The novel earned out its advance in its first year (not a big advance, mind you, but still). And finally, it won the most prestigious genre award in Australia – the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Which evokes the question: how fucked is this business?

What is the difference between success and failure? Fucked if I know. My booked was trunked, scorned, and widely rejected. But it was also a critical, award-winning success. The same book. If there’s a line there, I can’t see it.

I think luck plays a part. In general, you have to be good and lucky in publishing. Right publisher, right editor, right time. Dogged persistence almost certainly plays a part. There were a series of moments I could have quit, as you can see above, and it would have seemed a reasonable decision. But I maintained an enormous amount of recalcitrant belief in my novel, despite all available evidence.

My moderate success with the debut novel hasn’t filled me with self-confidence, and I don’t harp on the good reviews or the award as a brag (though I’m certainly not averse to mentioning them). All it has done is make me wonder: how many brilliant novels are sitting in a hard-drive, never to be read? How many good books were rejected by everyone? How many worthy stories were given up on by the author, after one too many searing critiques? I think about the other authors out there who’ve said enough is enough, and put the novel aside. I think about them a lot.

While I do believe that good stories will more often than not see the light of day, that talent and hard work will win out, I also know this: you’ve got to fucking fight for it. The line between success and failure is so bloody fine, and I’m right now I’m simply glad I managed to drag myself across it.

What I’ll say here, is what I wanted to say at the end of the Aurealis speech: If you’re feeling rejected, or disparaged, or ignored, if you’re feeling like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel: don’t give up.

Don’t give up.