The Official Matthew Reilly Homepage

I have started re-reading Thomas Friedman's THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE. It is a brilliant non-fiction book about globalisation. As someone who glazes over when people start talking about economics, this book is fantastic. I learned more about the movement of global capital from it than I have from any other source. It is a must-read for those people who simply dismiss globalisation as a demon to be despised and fought. This book doesn't advocate for or against globalisation, it just says "it's here, this is what it is" and lets you make up your own mind as to whether it is good or bad.

1. I have had word from my UK publishers that a deal has been struck with my German publishers regarding AREA 7 and my next book (which I haven't even started yet). A German-language edition fo ICE STATION is currently available in Germany and TEMPLE will be released there later this year. Both were bought during an auction frenzy at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1999. This new deal is awesome news!

2. Good to see that the US crew from that downed spy-plane have returned to the United States. I was intrigued by reports that once they landed on Hainan Island, the crew locked themselves inside the plane, destroying equipment, while the Chinese yelled at them through megaphones. I can't imagine how they felt.

3. Although those of you from around the world probably won't care much for this little tidbit, here in Australia we have a new leader for our Democrat Party - a spunky young lady by the name of Natasha Stott Despoja. She campaigned agaist the GST being imposed on books, and was genuinely outraged when her party's former leader took it upon herself to bargain books off against something else in the lead-up to the new tax. So, go for it, Natasha! Do some good!

4. SPECIAL SECTION!!!!
Okay, now, as I mentioned last week, because of the inordinate number of questions I receive on this issue, I thought I would do a special column on getting an agent and getting published. I even asked an agent I know, the legendary Fran Bryson of The Bryson Agency in Melbourne, for some tips.

First of all: getting published is hard. Let me repeat that: GETTING PUBLISHED IS HARD! And the key skill you need is not literary talent (although that does help), but determination.

You need the determination to persevere in the face of rejection and the self-confidence to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again. The key to handling rejection (as I see it) is this: don't take rejection personally; don't think that just because a publisher rejected your manuscript that it is no good (think of the publishers who rejected Harry Potter - ha!), and most importantly, don't burn your bridges. Pan Macmillan was one of the companies that rejected CONTEST at first. Now, I have a fantastic relationship with them.

Okay, I'll be straight with you: I don't have a literary agent. Since I got my break by self-publishing CONTEST, I've never had one. I do have a "film agent" (whose job is to sell the movie rights to my books), but no literary agent.

In order to find out where agents live, I'd suggest going to the nearest library or bookstore and checking out THE AUSTRALIAN WRITER'S MARKETPLACE, compiled by Rhonda Whitton (Bookman, Melbourne, 2001; website: www.australianwritersmarketplace.com).

THE WRITER'S MARKETPLACE has a list of agents and their contact details and, most , importantly it tells you how to submit stuff to them!

• Don't send your whole manuscript if they only want to see three chapters! Call first.
• Don't send a sci-fi action-adventure book to an agent who specialises in more 'literary' fare;
• When I asked Fran Bryson for any tips, she said the best way to submit work is "by phoning or emailing first to find out the agency's submission guidelines and to make sure the agency is accepting submissions at that time." Publishers are similar, sometimes they just aren't accepting any more manuscripts.

Fran Bryson (Bryson Agency)
PO Box 226, Flinders Lane Post Office, Melbourne VIC 8009

Anthony Williams (Anthony Williams Management)
PO Box 1379 Darlinghurst NSW 1300), and

Selwa Anthony
Don't know Selwa's address details, but she's based in Sydney and is known for representing popular fiction authors very well. If you want to be published badly enough, you'll be able to find her details.

Don't expect a response too quickly, either. These things do take time. But then, don't be afraid to call them up and see how it's going. After all, there was one agency to whom I sent CONTEST that lost the manuscript! Needless to say, they are not recommended above!

Going direct to a publisher is another route - but really the same rules apply. Call first, see if they're accepting. This is really, though, why getting an agent is better. You see, publishers use agents as a filtering process. If an agent sees potential in your work, chances are a publisher will, too. It doesn't do an agent any good to proffer bad books to publishers - the agent will get a bad reputation very quickly.

That said, publishers sometimes do pick up people directly (Pan Macmillan picked up Juliet Marillier when she submitted DAUGHTER OF THE FOREST unasked for). But do you want to know the best way to impress a publisher or agent: tell them that someone once paid you to write! So get paid to write. I sold three freelance articles to CLEO magazine just so I could say that I was a professional writer (they were pretty sexy pieces, too!!). John Birmingham has written for a lot of magazines, and Jessica Adams wrote (and still writes) horoscopes for the Daily Telegraph before she got a deal for her first novel, SINGLE WHITE E-MAIL. In some way, any way, get paid to write. It'll reassure any publisher (or agent) that you have the goods.

Apart from that, I don't know, get famous as an actor, singer, mountain climber or a round-the-world yachtsperson. If you do any of those things, you'll have no problems getting a book deal!

The only thing I would add, after all that, comes from the legendary Michael Crichton (my favourite author). I read his views on getting published once and he said this: the entertainment industry is like no other industry. If you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school; if you want to be a doctor, you go to med school. There is no equivalent to these in film-making or book publishing. The only constant is this: everyone finds their own way in.

I could not put it any better. You can know another author or your cousin could be an editor, you can get lucky, or you can put yourself in a position to be "discovered", as I did by self-publishing CONTEST. The truth is, the only prerequisite is determination - the unbridled desire to find a way in, and not give up. That's the only thing that got me published.