A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry , and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future. First-time novelists without a previous published reputation, such as publication in nonfiction, magazines, or literary journals , typically struggle to find a publisher.
21-645: Katherine Howe (born 1977) is an American novelist who lives in New England and New York City. She specializes in historical novels which she uses to query ideas about "the contingent nature of reality and belief." Her debut novel was the New York Times Bestseller The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009), related to the Salem witch trials . Its success led to her being a guest on several TV news shows, as well as "Salem: Unmasking The Devil" on
42-576: A graduate student in English studies, is a core member of this group. He is sometimes credited with helping to launch Howe's literary career. Howe's ancestors settled in Essex County, Massachusetts in the 1620s. She is related to both Elizabeth Proctor and Elizabeth Howe , women convicted of being witches during the Salem witch trials . Proctor was spared because she was pregnant at the time of her scheduled execution, and later among prisoners released. Howe
63-469: A reputation than from first-time writers. For this reason, literary communities have created awards that help acknowledge exceptional debut novels. In contemporary British and American publishing markets, most authors receive only a small monetary advance before publication of their debut novel; in the rare exceptions when a large print run and high volume of sales are anticipated, the advance can be larger. For an example of an unusually high advance: in 2013,
84-610: The Oxford English Dictionary , the earliest attested usage of "first novel" is from 1876. However, the term is much older, with instances going back to at least 1800. The Oxford English Dictionary does not have an entry for "debut novel". The earliest usage of "debut novel" in the Google Books database is 1930 (as of 2011 ). The term appears in newspapers as early as 1922, in a review of Marjorie L.C. Pickthall 's novel The Bridge . The Google Books Ngram Viewer shows
105-952: The National Geographic Channel . She has also written The House of Velvet and Glass , Conversion, The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen (2015), and A True Account (2023). Her fiction has been translated into more than 20 languages. Howe was born and raised in Houston, Texas . Her mother is a longtime curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston . She graduated from the Kinkaid School and earned her undergraduate degree in art history and philosophy at Columbia University . She began writing fiction while doing graduate work; she earned an MA in American and New England Studies at Boston University . She teaches at Cornell University . In 2016 she
126-541: The Philosopher's Stone , only receive small initial print runs. Debut novels that do well will be reprinted as sales increase due to word of mouth popularity of the novels—publishers do not often run large marketing campaigns for debut novelists. There are numerous literary prizes for debut novels often associated with genre or nationality. These prizes are in recognition of the difficulties faced by debut novelists and bring attention to deserving works and authors. Some of
147-700: The Pickwick Club (1837), all of which lack the complexity or stylistic characteristics which audiences praise in the authors' later work. There are however some debut novels that are regarded as the author's masterpiece , for example Gustave Flaubert 's Madame Bovary , Joseph Heller 's Catch 22 , Günter Grass ' The Tin Drum and Chinua Achebe 's Things Fall Apart . Sometimes, instead of writing novels to begin their career, some authors will start with short stories , which can be easier to publish and allow authors to get started in writing fiction. According to
168-582: The author gains a literary reputation. There are exceptions, however; YouTuber Zoella published her debut novel Girl Online in November 2014, and the book sold 78,109 copies in Britain in its first week. The novel saw huge sales because she already had an established audience, and publishers were willing to run a large print run. By comparison, bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey sold 14,814 copies in its first week, or later popular novels, like Harry Potter and
189-471: The author's typical literary characteristics . Huffington Post ' s Dave Astor attributes these to two forces: first that authors are still learning their own unique style and audiences are more willing to read works from unknown authors if they resemble more conventional styles of literature. As examples, Astor points to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman (1969) and Charles Dickens' The Posthumous Papers of
210-413: The capital needed to market books by an unknown author to the public. Most publishers purchase rights to novels, especially debut novels, through literary agents , who screen client work before sending it to publishers. These hurdles to publishing reflect both publishers' limits in resources for reviewing and publishing unknown works, and that readers typically buy more books from established authors with
231-518: The excitement of finding authors and writers without established legacies. In the same piece for the Times , Ayana Mathis describes the debut novel as "a piece of the writer's soul in a way that subsequent books can't ever be", because the novel is necessarily a work of passion and a product of all of their life before that moment. Often an author's first novel will not be as complex stylistically or thematically as subsequent works and often will not feature
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#1733085817303252-614: The highest ever for a debut novel . However, other debut novels acquired around the same time also received seven-figure advances. City on Fire follows the investigation of a Central Park shooting that took place on New Year's Eve during the 1970s. This book was a New York Times Notable Book and named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , NPR , Vogue , San Francisco Chronicle , and The Wall Street Journal . A television adaptation of
273-403: The highly anticipated City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg captured the attention of ten publishers who started a bidding war that ended with Knopf buying the rights to the book for 2 million dollars. The book's film production rights were purchased soon after by producer Scott Rudin . For similar reasons that advances are frequently not very large—novels frequently do not sell well until
294-566: The legacy of magical realist fiction in the American Southwest and in Mexico." Howe and her husband, the economic historian Louis Hyman (author of Debtor Nation ), are core members of a group informally known as the "Springfield Street Table." This batch of Cambridge-area writers and scholars gather to play poker, while trading barbs and debating culture and ideas. The bestselling novelist Matthew Pearl , who also started writing fiction as
315-805: The more prestigious awards around the world include the American Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award , the French Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman , the British Guardian First Book Award , the German Aspekte-Literaturpreis and the Japanese Noma Literary Prize . The New York Times commentator Leslie Jamison described the big, and often very public, "to do" about debut novels and novelists created by these book awards, as associated with
336-753: The novel will air on Apple TV+ . City on Fire received a mixed reception from critics. The novel received praise from Megan O'Grady in Vogue , who called it "the kind of exuberant, Zeitgeisty New York novel, like The Bonfire of the Vanities or The Goldfinch , that you'll either love, hate, or pretend to have read". Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times described it as "an amazing virtual reality machine", and credited Hallberg with an "instinctive gift for spinning suspense not just out of dovetailing plotlines and odd Dickensian coincidences but also from secrets buried in his characters' pasts". Stephen King tweeted about
357-518: The novel, calling it "massively entertaining", and "as close to a great American novel as this century has produced". Louis Menand wrote in his long review in The New Yorker, "What Hallberg is after is an atmosphere, and he gets it." On the other hand, Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post called it "overhyped" and "a steaming pile of literary dung". At The Guardian , Sandra Newman echoed
378-454: The sentiment of overhype, calling it "a debut of remarkable promise, rather than as the masterpiece that fulfills that promise". City on Fire debuted at #5 on The New York Times Bestseller list in the hardcover fiction category on November 1, 2015. This article about a historical novel of the 2010s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on
399-462: The term becoming more widely used after about 1980, gaining in popularity since. City on Fire (Hallberg novel) City on Fire is a 2015 novel by Garth Risk Hallberg , published by Alfred A. Knopf . The novel takes place in New York City in the 1970s. It is Hallberg's first published novel. Hallberg received an advance of $ 2 million for the novel, which was rumored at the time to be
420-572: Was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where she was finishing a novel set "among the corsairs of the Gulf Coast that imagines Texas’s role within the broader Caribbean diaspora. It is tentatively titled The Galvez Grand. It will build on archival research about patterns of trade and settlement on Galveston Island in the 1820s while engaging with
441-555: Was executed. Another of her relatives was Edward Howe, a ship captain, and his wife Hannah Masury, who took over his ship after his death on a Pacific excursion in the 19th century. Hannah Masury is the great aunt of Katherine Howe and her story became the inspiration for Howe's 2023 novel A True Account , which tells the story of a woman dressing up as a cabin boy on a pirate ship, which she eventually takes command of. Debut novel Sometimes new novelists will self-publish their debut novels, because publishing houses will not risk
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