A short thread on myths and misconceptions about the publishing world that I hear from unpublished authors on a regular basis.

Please take a seat...

1. THE PROLOGUE IS DEAD

I really do hear this a lot. That agents and publishers have decided, en masse, that prologues are naff, cancelled, history. Any submission that includes a prologue is almost certain to be rejected.

FALSE

I genuinely have no idea where this came from. Perhaps some agent at some conference somewhere said they were sick of prologues that it has now become TRUTH.

The idea that a book would be rejected just because it contains a prologue is nonsense.

If it were true, someone needs to tell the publishers of nearly every crime novel I have read in the past five years as I am pretty sure they ALL had prologues.

OK, so agents would rather not see the same old thing time and time again, so a predictable, cliched prologue is unlikely to appeal to them.

But a well-written, exciting, intriguing one would, I am sure, interest them every time.

Also, if any of them were vehemently anti-prologue but liked your sample chapters they'll just ask you to ditch the prologue. Simple.

2. YOU NEED TO HAVE A MASSIVE SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING TO GET PUBLISHED

If you don't have tens of thousands of Twitter, Instragram or Tickety-Tock followers then you might as well not bother submitting.

Again: bollocks.

Check out the Sunday Times bestseller charts today. Then see how many of the authors are on Twitter. I am willing to bet half of them aren't.

A social media following can be great, and could help sway an agent or publisher if we are talking BIG numbers, but it is not essential.

Certainly not when it comes to fiction, where the story and storytelling is key.

It could be more of an issue if you are pitching a cookery book, or a self-help book, or something like that. Having built up a following for your work and/or the message you are sending out is bound to help your case.

So, yeah, if you are submitting a cookery book to agents and you have 6 Twitter followers and 15 fans of your Facebook page, then it will be an issue. But, in general, it is not something agents insist upon.

It is a nice to have.

(But, of course, social media has its drawbacks. Tweeting the wrong thing to 100,000 followers can have more impact than years of tweeting the right thing.)

3. IF I HAVE PREVIOUSLY SELF-PUBLISHED MY WORK THEN AGENTS WILL NOT BE INTERESTED IN MY NEW STUFF

This is the notion that once you self-publish you are never allowed back into the world of traditional publishing.

Not true.

I will be honest, this may have been the case 10 or 20 years ago when the industry gatekeepers saw self-publishing as vanity publishing, but that has all changed.

Nowadays, it should not harm your chances, and could even improve them.

OK, so if you have self-published 20 novels and none of them have sold more than 100 copies and the covers are shit and are all ranked in the millions on Amazon, then don't expect agents to be knocking at your door.

But if they love your new book, well, the above may not matter.

And, of course, if your self-published book has sold tens of thousands, then it could be a significant boost to your chances of finding an agent of traditional publisher.

If you want one, of course. You've done pretty well so far on your own.

So there you have it. Three myths about the book world that I hope I have put to bed.

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