Browsing through Wikipedia, I found this excellent article on the Debut Novel, which I recommend to all our unpublished members.

It is condensed and readable, but loaded with valuable advice for new novelists. The “debut” novel is (of course) the first one to be published, not the first to be written. Seasoned authors talk about “writing for the wastepaper basket” – which hints that it is no shame to make several attempts at a novel before you produce one a good publisher is prepared to accept. But the earlier mss are in no way wasted, and some may see the light of day (in one form or other) once you get established.

Highlights of the article are:

  • the risks of self-publishing for an unknown author
  • the role of literary awards in getting a promising new author established
  • the size (or lack of it) of the monetary advance
  • literary agents as gatekeepers to getting established
  • the gradual development over several novels of an author’s literary characteristics (“voice”)
  • writing short stories as an gentler introduction to a career as a novelist.

The article is amusingly illustrated with the title page of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen‘s debut novel, published in 1811. The page does not give her name (she was then of course unknown), but simply states: BY A LADY. That was the best the publisher T. Egerton of Whitehall could manage, to commend the author to the reading public.