Taking the fiction plunge

One of the most challenging aspects facing us as we look to carve a small niche for Nemesis comes in the form of novel submissions.

With non-fiction, the subject of your book will, generally, identify your market for you. Our next book, Steve Joughin's autobiography, Pocket Rocket, is a prime example; being a local lad, the Isle of Man market should be receptive, and with Steve still being renowned and respected within the UK cycling fraternity (and further afield), we know that the market for his life story should be there. What's more, we know where we need to go and what we need to do to hit both of those markets.

We have other non-fiction projects in the pipeline, along with the first issue of the Vertigo anthology, which, while fiction, is being aimed at a niche market. (There's another fiction anthology we're looking at, but I can't tell you anything here. Far too top secret and all that)

But what we're really looking for is one or two novels to launch that side of Nemesis. The problem is this; fiction is so bloody subjective, it's difficult to know what might sell. And being a small publisher trying to get established, we need each project we take on to do one thing - make some money, as that's the only way we're going to grow and, in turn, be able to publish more books.

I've put aside this week to read the submissions that have built up recently, with a view to clearing the decks by this time next week, although that might be a tad ambitious. I read a lot of fiction, and review some, but when you're reading a manuscript, with a view to backing it with your hard-earned, it's somewhat tricky to be objective about something that is so subjective.

As with most fiction, you're flying blind. You can only trust your instincts, go with what you have a feel for, the kind of story and characters that hook you in the same way as all those good books you've read over the years. And even then, that's no guarantee that a particular story will be marketable. If I had a quid for every time I've heard an unpublished writer moan that agents and publishers overlook good manuscripts 'just because' it might be a tough sell, I'd be relaxing in the Maldives right now. Okay, maybe the Orkneys.

Will any of the current raft of submissions hook me? Tune in next week. Or maybe the week after that.

Pocket Rocket - the 1980s incarnation of Mark Cavendish

With the first issue of our Vertigo anthology set to go to the printers in the next few weeks, we're turning our attention to the next book, the autobiography of a British cycling icon of yesteryear.

If you followed British and European cycling during the 1980s, you'll remember the name Steve Joughin.

Twice British National Road Race champion and a stage winner in the Kellog Tour of Britain, what the Manxman lacked in stature he more than made up for with a fearsome sprint, and those who watched him in his pomp now look at 10-time Tour de France stage winner (and fellow Manxman) Mark Cavendish and nod their heads in recognition.

Steve was the Cav of his time. He took on and beat some of the world's best, turning pro in 1983 and enjoying eight years at the top. He became known as the Pocket Rocket, the little guy who could beat them all in a sprint.

Not only was he one hell of a cyclist, he was (and still is) a great character, with colourful tales to tell of his time racing around the globe, from dodging guerrilla fighters in New Caledonia to winning a race in Ireland and finding out that his prize came in the shape of a skutch of gas cookers, which he had to pay to have shipped home - only to discover they didn't work on Manx Gas...

Yet, as with all glory, it didn't last. Steve retired in 1991, unable to secure a ride. In a bid to help fill the huge hole that racing, and the thrill of success, had left in his life, he turned to the bottle. By 2001, he was lying in an Italian hospital bed fighting for his life. Not one to dodge a battle, Steve began the long journey towards putting his life back together.

Today, Steve is a volunteer for Alcoholics Anonymous, helping recovering alcoholics along the road he has walked. He lives in Stoke, where he runs a successful online cycling sportswear business with his son, and regularly returns to the Island to see family and friends.

Now, having turned 50, he's put his life story down on paper, with the help of author and cycling journalist Richard Allen.

When Richard approached Nemesis to publish the book, a read of the manuscript and a look at Richard's credentials, along with the knowledge of Steve's popularity within the cycling fraternity, made the decision a fairly simple one.

Richard is the co-author of Elite Cycling Performance and is a regular freelance contributor to Cycling Weekly, the UK's biggest-selling cycling magazine. He's followed Cav during the Tour de France, and there aren't too many names in the world of cycling media that he doesn't know.
As far as author platforms go, Richard's is firmly established - plus he has Cav lined up to write the foreword.

All being well, Pocket Rocket will be published in mid-to-late June, just before the 2010 Tour de France gets underway in Rotterdam, and we'll be blogging regularly in the build-up to publication.

This book is a major step for Nemesis - it is only our third publication, and we didn't expect to have a book with such a strong platform quite so soon, and this in turn has meant a bigger print run than we would have anticipated.

Of course, with book three in the works, we're looking for book four, which we would like to be a novel. We're reading through submissions now, on the lookout for 'the one'. You'll be the first to know when we find it.

Cool news - part two

As with all the best sequels, there's been a bit of time between our last post and this follow-up. Call it being a tease. Call it building suspense. Call it being downright slack...

But we're back now, folks, with this, our first blog post of 2010. To be honest, I've held off for a reason. The back end of last year was stupidly busy, with us publishing our first book, me finishing writing and then doing publicity for The Manx Giant, and then there was a short break away, the usual Christmas panic and mayhem. You know the sort of thing.

However, the overriding thing was this - we needed to wait for confirmation on cool news part two, and indeed, cool news part three.

Part two is now in, and here you have it. We have been approached by an acquaintance who is very supportive of what we're trying to do, which, for new readers of this here blog, is get an indie publishing house off the ground from a standing start. Absolute ground zero.

Anyway, this acquaintance/benefactor has offered to support us financially on a project by project basis - which means, in a nutshell, that as and when we need it, we can call in extra funds. This might be to secure a larger than usual print run, should we feel it warrants it; or it could be to secure a book where the design and print work is complex.

It's a good position for us - we retain full control of the business, including the decision on whether or not to publish a book, and the only proviso is an obvious one - if we put a particular project to our benefactor, and they aren't convinced, then they step away from it. No problem.

Ultimately, what this does give us is a bit of flexibility. Without it, we would have had to work from the ground up, with each book (potentially) having to do well before we could move up a grade in publishing terms.

With the benefactor in place, we can climb a couple of rungs on the ladder, which is what we are doing for our third book, which will follow the first issue of Vertigo, now set for an Easter launch.

Book three will be a biography. And that, of course, is where cool news part three comes in. But you'll have to wait for that. It won't be as long a wait as it was for this post, I promise...

And don't get me started on cool news part four. That's just too much.

Cool news - part one

A month? Has it seriously been a month since we last met? That is very remiss of me, and I don't even have an excuse. Well, not one you'd believe, anyway.

So what's been happening? We're close to finishing the design on both the Arbory School book and the first issue of the Vertigo anthology. There's another week or so of work to do, but we're close. I can almost smell the print.

There have been a few things happening behind the scenes these last few weeks - three cool snippets of news, in fact, but I'll just tell you the first for now. Always keep something in reserve, Quirky, that's what my old cross-country coach used to tell me. (And I did. It was a bag of cakes. And very nice they were too)

The first news is that author Chris Ewan has kindly agreed to pen a foreword for Vertigo. Chris is the creator of Charlie Howard, the cool novelist/thief/reluctant hero of The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and its sequel, The Good Thief's Guide to Paris. If you've not experienced Charlie Howard yet, give them a shot - they're fast, entertaining capers, with some deliciously dark and violent moments.

With the first issue of Vertigo almost in the bag, attention is turning to the second issue, and we'll be opening the floodgates for submissions soon. Watch this space.

For now, it's on with the design. Stay tuned for cool news part two and three...

It's crunch time. Big time

It's been a long gestation period for Nemesis. Three years, or thereabouts. Sometimes feels like ten. We've had to wait for the right moment, taking work, weddings and babies into account, but we've kept beavering away behind the scenes.

The submission process for the Vertigo anthology brought in 40-plus stories, which were whittled down to ten, followed by edits for each, meetings with the authors, rewrites and more editing. Meanwhile, we agreed to publish a book marking the 175th anniversary of our local school, Arbory, which the young fella attends, and Mrs Q has been heavily involved with the school's PTA to gather the extensive research together. I guess 'facilitating' would be a better word than publishing in this instance; we're looking after design and printing, but all profits from the book will go to the school.

But now the waiting is almost over. Both Vertigo and the Arbory book have to be with the printers by mid-October at the latest (although Vertigo can probably wait a little longer) and there are just two months to go.

Work on Vertigo is, generally, on hold until I've finishing writing the final draft of The Manx Giant, which is being published by the Manx Heritage Foundation. However, there have been a couple of cool developments in recent weeks.

First, the template for the Nemesis website has been agreed with the designers, and it looks excellent. Once the pages have been created, they'll be handed over to us to insert the text ahead of the site going live. I'm hoping that will happen by mid-September at the latest.

Second, an up-and-coming author who is creating some serious buzz with a series of crime novels has provisionally agreed to write a foreword for Vertigo. He's asked to see a couple of the stories to give him a taste of what the anthology is about, and they should be with him in the next week or so after further edits. But I'll keep our power dry until then as to his identity...

It's an exciting time. And also a bloody daunting one. There's no time to waste now. For the next two months, it's going to be all hands to the pump. Late nights and early mornings. And yet finishing the design and getting the manuscripts to print is only half the battle - the publicity campaign for both books will start to roll into action over the next month and gather pace towards Christmas.

Meanwhile, we still have one eye on next year, and how to follow up what we hope will be a successful end to 2009. Watch this space.

Waiting for the right stuff

With Vertigo out later this year, and one or two other non-fiction and short fiction collections in the pipeline, our thoughts recently turned to the big one – the first published novel. With the website in development, it would be ideal to have details of our first novel ready for when the site goes live.

We’ve received several manuscripts, which is pleasing, considering they arrived before we’d started putting our name out there. Some have been better than others, although at this stage there’s nothing which jumps out and screams ‘Publish me!’ One or two could be interesting with some work, but right now we have nothing ready to go.

As a new publisher, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg – with no back catalogue, you have no track record with which to convince writers that they should be submitting to you. However, if you go too early and publish something which isn’t up to scratch, you run the risk of soiling whatever reputation you may have.

So what to do? How long do you play the waiting game? Do you hold out for something utterly brilliant to thud onto your desk? Or do you take a chance on something that you think could work, having asked for rewrites and edits and the like?

With this in mind, I sought out the advice of Lynn Price, editorial director of California-based Behler Publications and resident editor within Litopia. If I had a pound for each time I’ve seen Lynn thanked by writers for the advice she offers, I’d have… hell, I don’t know, but I’d be damn rich.

‘You're certainly right that books build your reputation,’ Lynn told me. ‘And it's smart to have a bang-on book to open your gates. In my case, I knew a lot of writers, so I came out with several books at around the same time.

‘As to how long to wait till you're sure? That's hard to say. It's a gut feel in your radar that pings because you feel confident about promoting the book, the author has a good platform, you have a solid, identifiable readership, and the content is unique to everything currently in the store shelves. Fiction is hard to sell, and it's vital to understand the fiction marketplace.

‘My litmus test is, it has to be beautifully written, and I know I can sell it, given all the other parameters. I won't take something that needs a lot of work because it's too easy for the work to fall apart during the editing process. I'll make recommendations to the author about what I love and what I feel needs work. If they want to fix it and resubmit six months later, I'm good with that.

‘I won't/can't take something that I feel I'm taking a chance on because it's too expensive. I have to feel 100% committed. I wouldn't worry too much about not seeing great manuscripts yet; you haven't put your company name out there. Once you begin publicizing your company, you'll have a lot more to choose from.

‘The most important thing is not to make a round hole fit a square peg. Wait for the right book to come to you.’

Quite often, when you ask for advice, you already know the answer – you just can’t see the wood for the trees. Reading Lynn’s words, it became blindingly obvious.

So, the challenge to all you writers out there is this. We’re waiting for the ‘right book’. Get writing, get editing, get polishing and get submitting.

Cover story

While editing continues on the stories that will make up the first edition of our Vertigo anthology, we've got a big decision to make - how to pitch the cover art.

Regardless of the saying, people do judge a book by its cover. Okay, the final decision on whether to purchase might come down to other factors, maybe the back cover blurb or the first few lines of page one, but the cover can either hook a browser or confine your book to a long life on the shelves.

I received five uncorrected proofs in the post today to review, none of which I'd heard a word about. Of those five, one jumped out a mile - Prophecy of the Sisters, by Michelle Zink. It had by far the most striking cover art and it was the one to which my attention was drawn. Sure, I checked out the others and read the blurbs, but Zink's novel had its hook into me.

We need Vertigo to be a success. We're starting Nemesis from scratch, and that goes for finance too. Vertigo has to sell, in order to generate cash for future projects. What's more, we want this to be a regular anthology, and for that reason alone it's important that the first editon is well-received.

The reasoning behind the title of the anthology is that these are stories that will leave you feeling uneasy, disorientated, out of kilter with life. The artwork needs to reflect that, and look damn cool doing it.

So the choice of cover art for Vertigo is vital. Obviously, the stories have got to kick ass. But to get folk to buy the thing in the first place, we need a knockout front cover. Easily said, not so easily done.

Adventures in publishing. Warts and all

Welcome, one and all, to the blog of Nemesis Publishing.

We’re about to set off on a long (and, frankly, petrifying) journey into the world of books, as we try to get a small publishing house off the ground and fight for a seat at what appears to be an already crowded dinner table of crazed zombies ripping each other’s heads off in search of the tastiest morsel of flesh.

But we want in there.

We want to get a foot on that first rung of the ladder. And keep climbing. And we want you along for the ride.

We’ll be updating this blog regularly – daily, when feasible – and it will be a warts and all look at how the business develops. Your input is welcome; if there’s anything you want to ask about Nemesis, or publishing in general, leave a comment and we’ll endeavour to answer. If you have an idea for a blog topic, let us know.

Right, let’s rewind a little.

Nemesis began to take shape a couple of years back, when we had the idea of providing a platform for Isle of Man fiction writers. The plan was to publish a regular anthology, in typical paperback format, featuring long ‘short stories’ – 5,000 words or so, give or take the odd thousand.

And thus, Vertigo was born. The concept was simple – hard-edged, gritty and dark stories, in any genre, from crime to kitchen-sink drama to fantasy. We got the publicity machine rolling and the submissions started coming in.

Now here we are, in July 2009, with the first edition of Vertigo set to be in shops for Christmas this year, and a second in the pipeline.

But we’re not stopping there.

We have several non-fiction projects in the pipeline, and, through word of mouth, some full-length fiction manuscripts have been turning up on our doorstep and in our inbox.

We won’t be flooding the market with half-baked ideas in order to make a quick buck. We aim to start slowly, a book or two for the first couple of years, and build from there.

Our website is being developed, under the care of the crack web team at Isle of Man Advertising & PR, and until that is up and running, submissions can be sent to us at nemesispublishing(at)gmail.com – for fiction, a cover letter, one-page synopsis, first three chapters, Times New Roman and double-spaced. You know the drill.

What else?

You can follow Nemesis on facebook here

You can follow this blog on facebook here

You can follow us on twitter here

And that's about it for now, folks. Thanks for reading. We hope you stick around and enjoy the ride.

Cheers
Emma and John Quirk