Novelist who sold 10 million copies says she "wouldn't have a career" if she started writing now because the industry demands authors get instant results and accolades
Anita Singh
Val McDermid, the best-selling crime writer, has claimed that she would be a failed novelist if she were starting out today because the publishing industry no longer allows for slow-burning careers.
McDermid has sold 10 million copies and her series about the psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill was turned into the BBC drama Wire In The Blood.
However, she was far from an overnight success. Report for Murder, her first novel, was published in 1987 but she did not give up her day job until 1991 when she finally secured a two-book deal.
"If I published my first three novels now, I wouldn't have a career because no-one would publish my fourth novel based on the sales of my first three," McDermid said.
"I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way. I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed," McDermid said.
"Back in the day when I started you were still allowed to make mistakes. You got to make your mistakes in public, in a way. I think the world was a more forgiving place when I started my career, in the sense that we got time and space to develop as a writer.
"That is definitely something that wouldn't happen now. No-one will say, 'Write half a dozen novels and find yourself.'
"If you don't make the best-seller list, if you don't get shortlisted for any prizes, it's goodbye."
McDermid, whose other recurring characters are the journalist Lindsay Gordon and private detective Kate Brannigan, was speaking at an event to mark the opening of the new Foyles bookshop in London.
Other novelists who quietly published novels year after year before gaining mainstream success include Hilary Mantel, who was told at the beginning of her career that readers preferred their historical fiction to resemble "chick lit in frocks".
She found a publisher but it was two decades and nine books before she became a household name with Wolf Hall. It won the Man Booker Prize - as did its sequel, Bring up The Bodies.
“I don’t know,” Mantel joked after her second win. “You wait 20 years for a Booker Prize and two come along at once...”
Jonny Geller, the literary agent and joint CEO of Curtis Brown, said McDermid "has got a point".
"It's never quite as bleak as that but publishing is a lottery. What they are doing is putting big bets on some unknowns and it's all or nothing. There's a whole mid-range of novels that don't have a hook or spectacular angle that would have been published five years ago, but fewer publishers want to take the risk," Geller said.
"When I started in the 1990s it was a boom time for debut novelists and they were getting lots of money.
"But when the Borders and the Ottakars [bookshops] started closing, the market for more experimental novels and novelists with no track record got smaller.
"One of my authors is Tracy Chevalier. Her first novel didn't do much business - her second was Girl with a Pearl Earring and it has sold five million copies. Perhaps these days it would have been difficult to get the second novel published."
Geller said there was cause for optimism, however, even if publishers were lukewarm. "Val is right that there isn't the nurturing atmosphere any more. But publishing is marketing and everyone can be in marketing now, with social media and all these sites like Good Reads," he said.
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