So no one is interested in Pirates, eh? by Helen Hollick

Posted by Under The Black Flag articles, eh, helen hollick, So no one is interested in Pirates 1:45 π.μ.

What is it with publishers? I hear over and over that "no one is interested in pirate novels.”

The reasoning behind this publishers’ statement? “We know there are not many people interested in pirates because there are not many pirate books being published."
If you can make sense of that way of thinking then you are a better pirate than I am.


How many “Act like a Vampire” days (nights?) are there? None as far as I am aware.
How many “Wave your wand like a Wizard” days? None, as far as I am aware.
But September the 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Widely celebrated by adults more than chidren.
The UK Whitby Goth Festival which takes place during the nearest weekend to Halloween is littered with pirate people, so I am reliably informed. Goth and Pirate are, for some reason, closely intertwined. I don’t just get ghouls and ghosts and witches knocking at my door on 31st October. I get a fair smattering of pirates as well.


When P.O.C. #1 The Curse of the Black Pearl first came out the movie even took its maker – Disney – by surprise. They were expecting a small family movie, its intention to boost interest in the Pirate Ride at Disney Land (Disney World?) That’s why Tortuga is in the movie; it is a scene from the ride. That’s why the gaol is in the movie; the dog with the keys is a character seen during the Disney ride. Before the movie, there was no Jack Sparrow anywhere on the ride.

Along came Johnny Depp. Everyone, around the world knows who Jack Sparrow is.
Depp’s classic, brilliant performance re-awakened the universal lust for fictional pirates among the adults. Especially us ladies.
We like rogue characters who are dastardly charmers. That’s why vampires took the literary world by storm. They are SEXY. That’s why vampires are popping up in nearly every genre of novel you could think of.
If only someone with a bit of savvy would realise that pirates in fiction could be an even greater lure! Jack Sparrow proved it, but publishers are somewhat like the Royal Navy and see pirates as naughty people who should not be encouraged, The stuffy upper echelons who look down on a bit of rough.
Disney totally underestimated the lure of a sexy pirate character. So is the publishing world.

Some of my readers already know this, so skip the next paragraph if you like. But for those who don't:
I fell out with my ex-agent because she wanted me to write a pirate novel for teenage boys. I refused. I wanted to write a sexy pirate novel for adults, particularly for females. The women – young, old, who loved the P.O.C. movie and who, like me, wanted more. Wanted to follow on with something to read. Wanted – craved - a pirate fix.

Beyond Frenchman’s Creek, a trilogy by US maritime author James L. Nelson and children’s/teenage stories, there was virtually nothing available. And as for pirate fantasy fiction? Forget it! There is nautical fiction by the harbour full. C.S. Forrester’s Hornblower. Alexander Kent. Patrick O’Brian. The Kydd series. But pirate fantasy?

The forums were full of “Does anyone know of a good pirate novel?”
No one did.
The consequence of going against her was being somewhat brutally dumped by her and, simultaneously, by my publisher.
Like Disney she underestimated the movie. Like Disney she failed to register the adult interest. Disney, however, realised the error and movies 2 and 3 quickly came along. We’ll not go into the fact that neither of them were anywhere as good as movie 1, the point is, Disney quickly understood that their children’s movie mostly entertained the grown ups. It therefore does not need much working out that this same group of people want similar reading matter! We haven’t got it because publishers won’t publish it. Arghh!

Perhaps I was wrong to challenge my ex-agent. Maybe my instinct gut feeling was nothing more than personal stupidity. After all, no one was interested in Sea Witch. It did the rounds but I do not know if it was rejected because it was not a very good book, because ‘pirate fiction doesn’t sell’, or because no publisher was interested in a failed historical fiction author.
In hindsight I should have written it under a pseudonym. Preferably a male pseudonym. As men are not supposed to write romance, women, it seems, do not write nautical fiction. (what is it with publishers??!!)

My historical fiction was picked up in the US by Sourcebooks Inc, and I think their interest is proving to be worthwhile. They did not want Sea Witch though. For the same reason as above. At least, that is what they said.

She loved it. She loved my Jesamiah. In fact, she even went as far as saying she thought Sea Witch was the best of my books. The love I put into writing it shows.

So I decided to self publish with a small independent publisher who immediately grabbed it for their embryonic, even smaller, mainstream imprint. At least they could see that there is a market for pirates!
Given my limited marketing opportunities and the smallness of my publisher my sales figures are not exactly a treasure chest of gold, but I do not have the weight of a huge publishing company behind me. My small publisher and I cannot afford to send dozens of copies of Sea Witch, or the other two in the series, Prate Code and Bring It Close to the vast army of the blog reviewers. Add to that, I have the disadvantage of my books being classified as self published in the US. They are not. I do not pay to have them published. Yes I pay a freelance editor. Yes I commissioned new covers – beyond this I do not pay a single piece of eight towards the publishing production process. But they are Print On Demand books, which is assumed to be self published. So I am struggling against that inaccuracy as well.