“Making It Overseas” — Another WORD Christchurch Event
My event, in fact, although of course I got to share it with two other, very fine authors, Tania Roxborogh and Ben Sanders. 🙂
Apparently our event sold out, as well, which was rather gratifying. We were fortunate, too, to have crime author Vanda Symon as our very able compere — and here we are, the Gang of Four:
Tania Roxborogh is perhaps best-known for Banquo’s Son, her historical YA trilogy, while Ben Sanders writes crime fiction (American Blood and others), and I of course am Fantasy/Epic fantasy (Thornspell; The Wall Of Night series). As Ben put it beforehand in the Green Room, “Between us we’ve got it covered.”
The element we have in common is that we are all published overseas and the focus of the session was on the different paths that have led all three of us there. I was told from the outset that as long as I was writing Fantasy/Epic Fantasy I would never be published in NZ and would have to go overseas, whereas Ben and Tania were both successful here before acquiring agents and then international publishers.
Tania’s intro included a summation of her “seven years to overnight success” with Banquo’s Son having a proverbially rocky road to overseas publication, despite being a bestseller here at home, while Ben got his overseas breakthrough via a personal meeting with a NY publisher.
Ben in particular had to adapt his books to fit the US market, with Tania doing so to a lesser extent. I probably have been asked to make the least changes in this respect, since the books are set in alternate worlds, so there are no real-life differences to be negotiated.
Overall, we agreed that getting an agent had been beneficial for all of us. Audience questions focused on the “how to” of finding an agent, plus the nature of changes required to adapt to other cultures, and by implication how difficult that was.
All in all the hour passed really quickly and I hope audience members found it beneficial.
A big thank you, too, to the WORD Christchurch festival team for looking after us so well—and of course to the audience for “being there.” 🙂