Possible publication

[igenlode]

Having seen the number of "Phantom of the Opera"-based novels being marketed to the fans, I've been very tentatively wondering if this new story might possibly be commercially saleable: "Blue Remembered Hills" would have worked as an SF retelling in its own right if it hadn't been for the explicit Blake's 7 content, and this 'Swedish' story is pure Leroux as well as being book-length.

But I don't think I could take the embarrassment and rejection of submitting it to a proper agent, and even if they could understand the 'based on an existing novel' concept (viz. Laurie King's Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell books), I don't think 'fanfic AU' is a mainstream concept; it's not a sequel to Leroux's "The Phantom of the Opera", it's not a retelling, it's a story that branches off towards the end of the original novel and contradicts its ending. And the opening chapter doesn't make any concessions at all to establish who the characters are and how they got there; it assumes you can make the deduction. Opening sentence: "Goodbye, Raoul," Christine said gently, holding out her hand...

I assume this sort of thing is self-published, although I find it incredible that prose like this apparently won an award for "best fiction book of 2010", even a little local one; it's not bad, but it's pretty clumping and pedestrian. (And there's a typo in the excerpt given :-p) But since my book isn't E/C and isn't Erik-centric, I'm afraid I don't think it would stand a chance on the self-published fan market, even if I had the talent for promotion and publicity required to get anyone to notice it in the first place.

Although intriguingly, The Phantom's Apprentice seems to be well rated by fans despite not being an E/C romance: Erik is a criminal lunatic, Raoul is "swoon-worthy" (so maybe not all that close to Leroux, then!), and Christine is rewritten as a young woman whose heart's desire is to earn her own living as a stage illusionist -- an interesting tie-in to the Phantom's undoubted talents in that direction, but something of a departure from the original character...

Comments

[butterflydreaming]

You certainly have talent as a storyteller and the writing skills to write a tale. Sadly, there are a lot of good writers with traditionally published books that it seems like no one has read. I've had so many "have you read"/"you should read" conversations with other bookworms where we only overlap on well know award winners or novels required in school.

But if it's OK for me to offer advice, it seems that the best way to have a published book is to write short fiction to the market, literally choosing the publisher first and writing something they want. Are you familiar with The Submission Grinder (https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/) and Duotrope? A lot of them don't pay anything, which works well with your realistic expectations about the profit. ^_^

Personally, I'm really lazy about writing to the markets. I'd rather break my head on the long-standing novels in progress and go the indie route. Still, Fiction on the Web included my story off the archive when they did a print anthology, and that has been a shiny validation token for me.

[igenlode]

Right now I think the important thing is actually to finish the story (still very much an uncertain issue, despite the amount of talking I've been doing about it in various places over the last six months).

Beyond that... it's not so much that I want to 'have a published book' (I've had short fiction published, in an anthology and in a magazine, and even been paid for it -- though the latter case was an acquaintance who wanted to commission a regular half-column as 'filler'). I suppose it's more a feeling that having put all this work into something that might conceivably be saleable for once -- after writing nothing but fanfic for the last ten years -- I actually have the possibility of making use of it.

But my gut suspicion is that it probably is too slow and self-indulgent and too fan-fictional to be able to stand on its own for an audience who aren't in quest of 'the feels' about characters in whom they're already invested. Of course the only way to test that is to show it to someone external...

At the moment I'm rather doubting whether any audience at all is going to be interested in Raoul's nautical misadventures, which have the drawback of being nothing more than a massive plot-hole patch ("how does Raoul end up a thousand miles north of where we last saw him?")

[igenlode]

I came across somebody's self-published book today (a stack of unsold copies in a charity shop), and it was reassuring to find that it wasn't that good; technically fine in spelling and grammar, but discernably amateurish, undirected and waffly and not particularly gripping. It's nice to know that publishing houses serve some useful function!