stuartforsyth

Who knew the market for science fiction and fantasy writers was such a closed one? Walking the sci-fi aisles of Borders or Dymocks you could be excused for thinking the genre was burgeoning in popularity. You would also be wrong. According to Harry Bingham, author of the invaluable Getting Published:

Many agents have effectively closed the doors to fantasy / sci-fi because the administrative burden of sorting through all the bad manuscripts has overwhelmed the likely profit from the handful of good ones.

Harry, who is the MD of one of the UK’s leading editorial consultancies says the sci-fi slush pile is literally overflowing with poorly written submissions, many of them a grammatical train wrecks with plots blatantly plagiarised from computer games. Allow me a brief pause for the interjection of an expletive and the chance to vapourise my family-friendly blog rating. Shit! For science fiction, Harry’s advice is to either go after publishers in your local market, or snub the Queen and look to the livelier North American publishing market. Even then he advises:

with fantasy / sci-fi, you may need to go to more than the usual ten to twelve agents in order to get a reliable read as to the market for your work. Fifteen to Eighteen agents might be a more realistic number to target.

Above all, to stand even the remotest chance, you need to make sure your manuscript is orders of magnitude above the rest in terms of completeness. Writers often have one or two shots at getting picked up and noticed by agents and unless your manuscript screams competence and riveting you don’t stand a snowball’s hope in hell. So time to reign in my jubilation at having crafted a wonderful story and begin another serious round of critical self-evaluation and ruthless revising. Oh, and somehow finish my 2011 novel, hold down a challenging day job, make time for my family and kids, and work in a little R&R somewhere along the way.

Anybody know of a good cloning clinic Down-under?