Therese here. Today’s post is about difficult-to-place books, and here to talk about that is today’s guest, Carolyn Jess-Cooke. Carolyn is an author out of the U.K. who’s published not only a beautifully reviewed “fringe” novel–The Guardian Angel’s Journal (Little,Brown / Piatkus, 2011)–but a book of award-winning poetry–Inroads (Seren, 2010). She’s been called “one to watch” (Publisher’s Weekly) and “The new Audrey Niffenegger” (Company). I’d tell you a little more about what the book is about, but Carolyn is going to tell you in the post, so let’s just get to it. Enjoy!
“My novel’s too ‘fringe’ – will any commercial publisher on the planet be interested?”
Any writer with an internet connection knows that publishers are wary of anything that doesn’t smack of commercial appeal, and in the current economic climate, with sliding books sales and book giants like Borders closing their doors, wariness has become the publishing industry’s watchword. A writer submitting a manuscript in such a climate needs to make sure that his or her book doesn’t have ‘risk’ written all over it. However, this does not mean that you should compromise your material, your genre, or your passion. It’s a matter of searching out the universal, human themes of your work – and I bet they’re there. Your novel is about an uprising of farmhands in 16th century Mongolia? Or the conflict between two agoraphobic siblings over their parents’ clown museum? Fine – but what about your themes? Could your novel be pitched (or tweaked) as a story about redemption in the face of adversity? Love against all odds? Think of Shakespeare – 400 years later and he’s still making money, even when Renaissance English is virtually a foreign language. Why? Because even when his plays are about depressed aristocrats or magicians on mysterious islands, they’re really about the conditions of humankind.
Forget for a moment that the publishing industry is risk-averse. Think about your readers. What country are they from? What year were they born? Too often we assume our readership would fit in the back of a Volvo. If we want the material that we’ve spent upwards of 10,000 hours working on to reach a readership born in countries we’ve yet to hear of and in a year we’ve yet to reach, it’s important to find a way to work even the most ‘niche’ plots and fringe topics into something that ultimately deals with the human condition.
When I started writing my novel The Guardian Angel’s Journal – about a woman who dies and comes back as her own guardian angel – I didn’t really think about whether it was too ‘fringe’ for a publisher to be interested in. I didn’t give a fig pudding about what the market was like, what was trending, and the crisis of the publishing world. I had a vague idea of my readership. At the forefront of my mind was a burning desire to tell a story about a woman who was confronted with all her regrets, and who was given 
the opportunity to change it all at a mighty cost. On hindsight, the book could well have turned out to be much too paranormal for any of my publishers’ tastes. I could have focused on the supernatural element; written it in a distanced, overly-literary style, from the perspective of a minor character. What I believe caused it to be picked up and translated in 20 languages as very much a commercial book is its focus on human nature: when it comes down to it, the book deals with universal themes of life, death, love, and regret. It’s more about motherhood than it is about angels. It’s much more about the question – ‘what would you do if you had a second chance at life?’ than ‘what would you do if you became a guardian angel?’
It’s an issue I’m meditating upon as I finalise my second novel, which deals with some potentially ‘fringe’ issues – mental illness, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, religion, and the supernatural. The foremost question I asked myself throughout writing and editing this book was, ‘what is this really about?’ What is the message of the story? What are the themes? In short, how can I get someone who has no interest in mental illness, no notion of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and no desire to read anything about religion or the supernatural to engage with this story? Note: I never forced a subtext upon the story, it was always there at its core. But it’s important to dig down deep, way below the layers of the plot and the relationships between the characters to find that truth and to reveal it gradually to your readers. In truth, you can choose the most unusual, obscure and random topic imaginable to write about – A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, anyone? – and use it completely to your advantage to reveal insights into humanity in a fresh, exciting way.
Regardless of how risk averse the publishing industry is or isn’t, regardless of whether you self-publish or sign a four-book-deal with a huge publisher, considering the human element of your book – the issues you deal with that can and will affect all of us – is crucial to making your work appeal to a wider audience.
Thanks for this insightful and interesting essay, Carolyn!
Readers, are you writing on the fringe? What themes have you tapped? Have you gone far enough?
Learn more about Carolyn and The Guardian Angel’s Journal on her website and blog (The Risktaker’s Guide to Endorphins, and by following her on Twitter (CJessCooke). Write on!
I think when you are writing, it’s really not worth focusing on what you “should” write. Unless you are just writing for money – in which case, surely there are much easier jobs out there. We have to write the stories we feel strongly about.
The Guardian Angel’s Journal sounds really cool – I would certainly read that book.
Do you think Joyce worried if Ulysses was too fringe for the current market? As writers, we need to write the story, characters and conflicts that we are meant to write. Once we look at the current publishing trends and manipulate our story around what might sell, we have only sold one thing, ourselves and our art.
Like any form of art, writing is subjective to its audience. I wouldn’t concern yourself with what the publishers want until you have a contract, and even then, it’s still your story. It’s not like we make a ton of money writing our stories anyway. We’re just a bunch of starving artists anyway.
Hopefully your novel will sell and will be studied literature classes fifty years after your dead. That’s the highest esteem any writer could hope for.
Well, I’m working on a series of lesbian detective novels. To be honest, I looked into whether or not the big six publishers were publishing this sub-genre, and I quickly found out that they aren’t (except for St. Martin’s which publishes a couple of authors, but they haven’t taken on anyone new in over a decade), so I decided to look at the publishers who are publishing this kind of novel, and there are plenty of small presses that do. The first book in my series is now under contract with Bella Books.
I’m not sure if I’ve followed the advice of today’s contributor or not. My book with be marketed to people who are already reading lesbian detective novels. Could it have appealed to a mainstream audience? Should I have tried to get it published with a big six publisher so that it stood a chance of reaching outside of its niche? Or is Ms. Jess-Cooke suggesting that you know your audience and get the book to them specifically? The latter is the road I’ve taken.
You provide a guide point we should all have tattooed on the inside of our forearms. Then we could be reminded easily and unavoidably. In the argot of recent politics: ‘It’s about people, stupid!’
I think that’s the essence of what a fiction writer must grasp. We imagine all these places whether it be a dragon infested kingdom or a small train station and extravagant stories. What really hooks a reader into loving and believing your story is its characters and the conflicts they deal with. It makes a story timeless and unforgettable.
“I didn’t give a fig pudding about what the market was like, what was trending, and the crisis of the publishing world.”
Good enuff.
Love this.
Inspiring and helpful post, thanks. The stories I’m most interested in and most want to read and most often buy in the store don’t fit into categories, and sure enough, that’s what I write.
Great post, Carolyn!
I agree that writing the best story we can is the first priority… and I’ve found that themes just naturally emerge during the process.
Your book sounds intriguing. I’ll add it to my “must read” list. (Gorgeous cover!)
This great post is carrying a couple of great advices to all aspiring writers.
a) When you are starting a novel, don’t give a ‘fig pudding’ about market trends, crisis of the publishing world or the readership.
Just concentrate about the story.
b) Whether the story is about a dragon or an angel or a tractor in a remote country or whatever may be, ‘use it completely to your advantage to reveal insights into humanity in a fresh, exciting way’.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Synchronicity strikes again. This post discusses the issue I’m struggling with as I decide which of my story ideas to develop for my second novel.
Thank you for sharing, Michelle.
Thank you for your post, Carolyn. If you’re available to respond to questions, I’d like to know how you pitched your book? Did you pitch the universals? Or mention the specifics with the universals? Again, thank you for writing such an informative, inspirational post.
Good point. I find it so much easier not to worry about “trends” and what sells when I’m writing it than when I’m pitching. As soon as pitches and queries come into the picture, the fringe issue rears its ugly head.
A number of classic novels could have been described as “fringe” in their time. But they are great novels.
What subject matter or characters doom one to be “fringe”? Is slavery too non-commercial? Sorry Harriet Beacher Stowe, Alex Haley and David Fuller. Gay protagonists doom you to slender sales? Christopher Isherwood and Armistead Maupin, what were you thinking?
In my experience, cross-genre fiction trips up publishers when it’s intentions (story purpose) are actually muddled. Dark fiction sells poorly when its protagonists are difficult to care about. “It’s really about people” say frustrated authors using horror, mysticism and magic…except when you read it, the people sometimes aren’t all that real.
Are there novels for which the world truly isn’t ready? Is there such a thing as being before your time? Perhaps. But great stories are always compelling. Universal characters paradoxically are like no one else. Universal themes get that way because they force us to get something we always knew to be true, somehow, but didn’t quite see before.
I say let’s banish the word “fringe” from the publishing vocabulary and focus on what makes fiction great whatever it’s subject matter, setting or characters.
Thanks for a useful post, this sentence really spoke to me: “when it comes down to it, the book deals with universal themes of life, death, love, and regret.”
AFter reading this I spent a few moments pulling up stories from my mind and asking myself ‘what was the theme’. What you say above can be found in all novels, but the difference lies in how the themes drive character behavior, and this comes down to how much the author is dedicated to the story.
BTW- I think your idea for guardian angel’s is brilliant. I hope it does well :-)
I think it’s important to remember that what seems fringe to one person might not seem such to others, and your audience may be wider than you think–and can grow even wider when you consider themes and universals, as your post discusses. I can think of lots of people who would like your novel, both for the plot elements and the issues!
As an aside, “theme” is why it’s so hard for me to come up with comp titles for my manuscripts. I can think of lots of titles they’re like thematically, but all of the plot elements are completely different!
I have noticed that “religion” in particular seems to cause eyes to glaze over and assumptions of fringe to explode. There’s also such a fine line between “fringe” and “niche.”
About 20 years ago, I was told the vampire genre was washed out, that Anne Rice had drained the swamp, so I was wasting my time writing vampire novels. It’s a bit presumptuous for anyone but an established writer to worry about the marketplace when starting out a novel anyway.
Thanks guys!
Dolly – absolutely. and thanks! I hope you get a chance to read it.
Phil – ‘Hopefully your novel will sell and will be studied literature
classes fifty years after your dead.’ I hope so!!
Sonje – Not every book will be mainstream, and that’s cool. It’s about knowing your audience. it sounds like you’ve taken the right road.
Alex Wilson – big like!
Mandy Calvin – ‘What really hooks a reader into loving and believing your story is its characters and the conflicts they deal with’ – I absolutely agree.
bekah – *chuckles*
Petrea – good luck!
Cindy – thanks! hope you enjoy x
mudboard blog – thanks to you, too
Linda Cassidy Lewis – good luck with your second novel!
Rhonda – I pitched it as it continues to be pitched – a story about a woman who comes back as her own guardian angel – and I think my agent sold it to various territories by explaining that the supernatural is crucial to the ‘human’ element
Donald – ‘Universal themes get that way because they force us to get something we always knew to be true’ – i think truth is key to any story
Kari – thanks!
Kristin – ‘I can think of lots of people who would like your novel, both for the plot elements and the issues!’ – hey, I’d love that!
x
I’ve published over 35 children books in Holland, but never an adult book for exactly that reason. The one adult supernatural book that I have written could be a succes in English speaking countries, but probably not in Dutch. After reading this very insightful blog, I realize that I have a different problem: it probably is to Fringe and not universal enough. Which gives me a perfect starting point for the second draft!
Thanks a lot!
Marcel van Driel
Thankyou for clearing the supernatural mist from my WIP.
For the first time I’m able to define it. My WIP “Illuminate Rifts” is fringe with it’s fantasy/paranormal bend but its…
The story of a woman’s very human struggle with kids, spouse and he own sanity.
A million thanks!