Last time, I covered the need for an unpublished author to demonstrate a large Following for his/her as-yet-unpublished work and ended with the tantalising hint of a Quick Fix…

Remember, you need a big Following to catch the eye of a publisher and encourage that eye to glance at your life’s work manuscript, currently sitting in the “Slush Pile”. We saw how this takes great time and effort to achieve, while holding down a day job and getting that novel finished.

So – to deliver on my promise.

The Quickest Fix

Did I mention fake followers? Yes, in an earlier post, where I talked about numbers impressing. Not the quality of those numbers, of course, just as the quality of your manuscript is not yet under consideration. You are still trying to get their attention.

The quick fix? Buy a few hundred thousand followers, just as many pop stars have recently been outed as doing.

Fine, let’s say I buy 50,000 fake followers for $2,000. Now will you read my manuscript? It’s much, much better than before I made that investment.

(ADDENDUM 8/8/14 : I find that 50,000 followers can now be purchased for only $290, so buy your imaginary friends while stocks last)

Other Quick-Fixes

Other good ways to get published are:-

• to know someone in the industry
• to have a relative who plays golf with the right people
• to wangle an internship at a publishing house

Being picked-up at random from the slush pile is a rarity. And how I hate that prejudicial term, which devalues the work of years in a thoughtless insult.

Justifiable?

But perhaps there is commercial justification for the industry’s dependence upon Following.

Robert Galbraith’s debut novel “The Cuckoo’s Calling” attracted microscopic sales, until Galbraith (“a former plainclothes investigator who had left in 2003 to work in the civilian security industry”) was outed as J.K. Rowling. Sales rocketed, based on the Following attracted by her previous work. Here, an established author’s (genuine) huge Following really paid off for the publishers, turning a loss-making release into a raging success, after the accidental leaking of the truth.

So how does the unpublished author with no connections and a small, but genuine, Following (perhaps like the Beatles, only in Liverpool) and who has enough moral fiber to resist purchasing Followers actually get the next “Gone With The Wind” published?

Hmmm… tricky question. I’ll think about it and get back to you – next time.

Image courtesy of basketman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net