Life as an au
Faith Eckersall gives point-by-point advice on writing that novel
• There isn’t a heap of money. In 2022, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society reported that, since 2006, the median income of full-time authors had fallen by around 60 per cent to a measly £7,000 a year. And remember, folks, that’s the median – many get far less. Any advance must be earned out by sales before you get a slice of the financial action and, if you have an agent, they’ll get 15 per cent of everything. (And so they should, because these wonderful people, who deal with your publisher and negotiate over foreign rights, AI horribleness and Netflix acquisitions don’t earn a penny until you do.) If I had kept a tally of all the hours spent writing and rewriting my novel – I revised my first book more than 18 times – I think the ‘pay’ would tot up to less than half pence a word.
• Give up the idea of giving up the day job. Because: money. But also because you’ll need your lovely network when it comes to getting those precious eyeballs on your book and hands reaching for credit cards to pay for it. I overcame my natural reticence to become a serial tapper- upper of almost anyone in newspaper and magazine publishing who I thought might be able to get the book more publicity. As journos, we are also good at thinking of all the different ways we can adapt and recycle our story and it would be a pity to let it all go to waste, ahem…
• When’s it coming out/what’s it called/can I see the cover? Astonishingly, most publishers don’t decide these things early on. So you may not be able to tell people the book’s title or even what it will look like until, potentially, a few weeks before its release. Remember, too, that your publisher may want to change the title you have lovingly bestowed on it and you’ll probably have little say on the cover design. I was shown two, both of which I loved. Another thing you won’t know until the first royalty statement comes in is how many copies you have actually sold. Which is probably for the best…
• They may want you to produce the next book insanely quickly. I write cosy crime and publishers seem to like knowing they have another novel in the bag before publication day so keen readers can be directed towards it. This is why I’m currently finishing my third Piddlington Gazette mystery, although my first was only published in November 2025. Even if you’re not contracted for a series,
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interested publishers and agents will want to know your ideas for future novels – so make sure you have some.
• Structural or developmental edits. Unless your name is a combination of the words Austen and Jane, or maybe Osman and Richard, expect this trial to be visited on you. You may be asked to make ‘just’ a few changes, move a chapter, axe a character or – as happened with my first novel – ‘actually put a dead body in it, please’. Leaving aside the Olympic-standard heavy lifting that the word ‘just’ does here, if you’re like me,
JOHNNY GREIG / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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