Pride and pigeonholes

For budding authors, the submissions process can be daunting. For anyone with little understanding of the publishing industry and how it works, it can be even more so. And for anyone whose writing sits outside of the established ideas of genre, style or content, it can be utterly baffling as to how to present that to an agent or publisher.

Until very recently, I’d been submitting my novel manuscript as "northern fiction". It’s a northern novel, set in a northern pit village, using northern dialect and written by a northern author. But then a response from one very lovely agent, who said she enjoyed it but that it didn’t represent historical fiction, set my mind wandering. I’d thought for all these years that I’d been honestly and boldly stating my point of difference by labelling my work first and foremost as northern. But rather than being a help, was it perhaps a hindrance?

The UK book industry loves categories, which makes sense when you consider that it exists in a country still obsessed with class. While this seems a smart and stress-free way to market a publication for publishers and agents, it comes back to bite them on the arse when it comes to enhancing diversity.

In Anthony Cummins’ article in the Guardian shortly after the announcement of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023, he wrote how Granta’s editor, Sigrid Rausing, "refreshingly lets us know how the judges pitted authors of similar-seeming books against one another… Graeme Armstrong was last man standing among a gang of ‘vernacular novelists’ that included Moses McKenzie, Guy Gunaratne and Gabriel Krauze."

While this does seem a good way to make a very hard decision a little easier, it also feels a little restrictive. Why could there be no more than one vernacular novelist on that list? Show me the rule that says ‘only one sci-fi author at a time please’. The phrase "similar-seeming" says it all, really – are we so much a slave to labels that they add another layer of competition to an already competitive process? Welcome to the Hunger Games.

The UK book industry loves categories, which makes sense when you consider that it exists in a country still obsessed with class

Author Ajay Close, whose latest novel, What Doesn’t Kill Us, is published by Saraband this month, says: "Marketing involvement inevitably puts people into silos, like ‘gritty northern working-class’ or ‘fey Scottish island voice’. You end up packaged, and you can see they wouldn’t be interested in things that cross between those handy definitions that they’ve worked out for themselves."

So why could being packaged prove a problem? Not least because as a writer you leave yourself open to the stereotypes and biases that exist around those labels. And we all know how northern writers go when it comes to being stereotyped. Ask Andrew McMillan, whose new novel Pity has just been published by Canongate, who is keen to emphasise the prismatic quality of narratives from the north; that there is no one way to write ‘northern’ in the same way there is no one way to write ‘queer’. What do we mean by a ‘northern story’ and what might that tell us about our biases? If you really want to understand the full diversity of northern stories, I’d recommend McMillan’s recent Guardian article on the topic.

There is, of course, the other side to the argument that emphasising that difference could be a positive thing. Particularly if the story within the pages is trying to encompass a northern or working-class setting, characters or dialect. Readers might be searching for that, seeking out stories that represent what is currently a very under-represented community in the UK book industry’s literary output. Penguin’s marketing of Jennie Godfrey’s debut The List of Suspicious Things does just that, as the northern setting, dialect and characters are a huge part of book’s appeal.

There’s no simple solution to the question – to embrace difference or reject it? Perhaps the key lies in creating a combination. I’ve since started submitting my manuscript as "historical fiction that uses a northern dialect and setting". It feels infinitely more comfortable to have that historical label front and centre, as I’m less concerned that rejections will be based on the ‘too niche’ or ‘not a big enough market’ – excuses I’ve heard when people see the word ‘northern’. Because, according to some in the publishing industry, only northern people read northern books...