What to do in a publishing slump

Across your career as an author, you will have brilliant times and low times. There will (most likely) be times when nothing you write is being taken by a publisher; when it feels like the market doesn’t want your books.

What do you do?

Acknowledge the pain

This is a form of grief. You put everything into writing those books and it really hurts that nobody is taking them. Feeling sad and angry and resentful and jealous is totally reasonable and normal.

Accept that this is a NORMAL part of publishing. Not everything you write will be published. Publishing is a business. It responds to the market. You have to build slumps into your practice both in terms of income and head-space (how you feel about them).

Talk to people

Ask your agent what’s not working with your writing, what’s missing, whether you could tweak your style to suit the market.

Ask friends. I do a lot of manuscript swaps with writer friends and sometimes one of them spots a more hooky angle in my book. (I’ve done the same back. It’s much easier to notice themes or hooks in someone else’s work.) Writer friends are my absolute lifeblood. I could not get by without regular chats with them to pick me up or to help me tailor my work. Your colleagues know stuff. Ask them.

Remember it’s not a race

We all feel like we want something published NOW. But you have waaay more time than you think. If you don’t have a book out for five or even ten years that is not a problem in terms of reputation. The industry will wait. Your readers will wait.

The market may change

What is trendy now might not be in a few years’ time. The market moves fast. At the end of the pandemic there was (understandably) a big push for issue-based picture books about feelings. I had a panic because I don’t write those kinds of books. I write more adventure-y books. I had a run of rejections and for a while I wondered whether my writing career was over.

But of course, it wasn’t. The market swung around and now adventure books are selling again.

Take the pressure off

If you can find another source of income, do. It’s really hard to write when you have huge pressure to earn. I’m the main breadwinner so when I had a gap I had to rush to fill it with other forms of income. I’m glad I did because otherwise I would have been in such a state about earning, I probably would have frozen in fear.

You could try teaching writing, mentoring, doing more school visits, getting a job in publishing, freelance editing, RLF work, content-writing work. You could also apply for grants from the Society of Authors or the RLF or the Arts Council. Or you could do a job totally unconnected with writing.

Take other pressures off too. A slump does not mean you are a bad writer. It does not mean you will never have a book out again. Remember:

People aren’t looking at you

Nobody is counting how many years it’s been since your last book and saying ‘Oo look at her. She hasn’t had a book out in ages. She’s totally lost it’ – or any other negative thing that’s spiralling in your head. People are mostly thinking about themselves and their own books. They won’t notice if you go quiet for a while.

Look at your old work

If you have published books before, can you repackage them? Can you write a screenplay for one of your old books?

Or could you re-promote them somehow?

Contact old editors

If you have good contacts, email them and ask if you can have a chat. (Check this plan with your agent first). Ask what kind of thing they are looking for at the moment, where their gaps are. See if you have anything you can tweak or if this sparks a new idea.

Craft/play

Use the time to try something different. Try poetry or flash fiction or non-fiction or a screenplay or anything you haven’t done before. Do it FOR FUN. Not to be published. Put yourself back into the zone where you wrote because you enjoyed it, because you loved your craft.

Apart from making you a better writer, you never know where this might lead.

Diversify your interests

Find other angles to interest you in the industry – volunteer with a reading charity, become a patron of reading for a school, join a Society of authors committee, start a new writing group.

Above all…

Keep writing

So much of this industry is beyond our control but you CAN control your own work. You can put your head down and write another book.

Don’t give up hope. Keep writing what you love.

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.