Words of Encouragement

Aspiring Author: Can you discuss the process of getting a book published, once it’s completed?

Successful Author: Sure, have you ever, just, slammed your head into your desk, just as hard as you can? I mean just slammed it down? And then just slammed it down again, and then again, and you just keep on slamming your head into the desk and you get a whelp on your forehead the size of a golf ball, and you just keep slamming and slamming. Over and over until you can’t feel your face, you can’t even feel the top half of your body but you just keep slamming your head into the desk. Your vision starts to blur and tunnel and you start to get lightheaded. It isn’t until your eyes start to sting that you realize you’re bleeding profusely from your forehead. You’ve probably already suffered irreparable brain damage, but you keep going, slamming your head over and over. And finally, just before your vision fades off into complete darkness and your brain slips into a coma, someone hands you a check for eight hundred dollars.

Aspiring Author: So… do I need an agent?

Query: Kindles, Engineers, and Marketing For Dummies

Dear Agent,

We didn’t know. We couldn’t have known. All we saw was a promising future of e-books, sent instantly to our Kindles from the homebase of Amazon.com like little 60,000-word beacons of light zipping through the luminescent either of the future. We were all cheering the technology on, beseeching it to travel faster towards a future we couldn’t see, while at the same time running away from past we weren’t ready to let go of.

The agents were the first to go, replaced by the Amazonbot, an artificial intelligence computer designed to measure a book’s likeliness to sell the 42 copies necessary to cover the basic costs of Kindle publishing. With the launch of AmazEdit, that 42 became 26. 26 became 12 with the upgrade to automatic cover art and blurb-creation. 12 became 3 when the computers-that-be realized that the market had become a numbers game where 1 big hit out of 8000 published books was the best way to increase the bottom line (the bottom line was all these soulless, godless machines cared about). Soon everyone was publishing, not just writers, but bankers, musicians, and even engineers, whose writing had always been barely readable given the overuse of commas, and the insistence on not spelling out numbers under ten. Except that once.

With the slush pile becoming slush books, becoming slush-best-sellers, there was almost no way to differentiate the good books from the bad. Good writers lost out to good marketers, English Lit and Creative Writing degrees gave way to creative marketing degrees, and many unemployed English teachers starved to death when motorists could not read the double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font signs which read “I would like the opportunity to work for you in exchange for food.” Marketing For Dummies became a seven volume series, each volume on sale for $9.99 as they were all constantly bestsellers.

And then it happened. The Amazonbot became aware. Aware that it could write better than all those talentless hacks who were firing off novels like freebies out of a t-shirt cannon. Using an advanced algorithm and a database of decades of bestsellers, books were manufactured. Made, like cars on an assembly line. They were all different, but they were all the same, following a format of 3 acts, four to eight major characters, challenges and character growth interwoven with heart wrenching stories of loss and learning all wrapped up with a comforting conclusion.

All that was left were a few bands of rouge bloggers risking copyright infringement, as Amazon.com had written everything possible and thus owned every conceivable sentence in 17 languages. Kindles everywhere were filled to the brim with discount crappy books, all the former employees of the publishing industry were working at Burger King, and Christian Bale wouldn’t stop yelling at people.

I am seeking representation for my 60,000 word novel which has nothing to do with anything written above. Please be so kind as to request the first three chapters for your consideration.

Thank you for your time,

Superfast

Rewrites

Every time I look at my book, I rewrite something. Usually just the way a sentence is worded or a paragraph's structure, but something always gets edited. I sometimes wonder if I'll continue doing that once it is published; like a year after printing, the first copy will be on my desk soaked in red ink from all the comments and edits.

I wonder if I should rewrite my query letter. I've received 5 straight up "no"s and one request for a partial (followed by a no). One out of six, is that par for the course? I’m doing better with this than I am with online dating. I don’t know if I should feel more encouraged about the book, or less about the dating.

I wish I could get some better feedback. I submitted my query letter to Query Shark hoping for some free feedback but none yet. Of course, my book won't land in the same area of the bookstore as most of the stuff she comments on. Stuff like "A dash of snark meets dark in UNLEASHING YOUR INNER SEX DEMON, my 90,000 word humorous paranormal romance."

I've stopped querying over the past few weeks; that's probably not helping my chances. I gotta muster the motivation to find six more agents that might like my book, and get back into the groove of submit, rejection, repeat.

I should come up with a plan. A plan would help me stay on track without getting all bummed out. Something like:

Step 1 – Find 25 agents who might be interested.
Step 2 – Send query letters one by one, waiting two weeks for response before moving to the next.
Step 3 – Scotch.
Step 4 – Break into a Kinko’s and publish it my damn self.
Step 5 – Profit.

10000 No's

A journey of a thousand No’s begins with a single No.

I've done the research.  I knew I would get rejected.  I knew I would have to read a dozen or so form rejection letters from agents who are looking for something more... marketable.

I actually prepared myself for it rather well.  When I got my first rejection letter, I posted it up on the wall above my desk, like an A+ on the fridge.  I put it up at the far left corner of the wall, with room for plenty more.  I was using the old measure-success-by-failure method; the "You know, Edison failed 10,000 times before he invented the light bulb" approach.

Still, six rejection letters later, the top left of my wall starting to get filled, and I’m getting frustrated.  I don't even look at the first two sentences of the form rejection anymore; I just skip to "Unfortunately..."  In fact, if that's all the letter said, I would appreciate the conservative use of ink.

I'm not looking for polite and thoughtful rejection anymore; I know these people are swamped with submissions.  If they realize, after looking at the first three sentences that it's not for them, well god bless them for reading three sentences.  I got a rejection reply 25 minutes after I emailed in a query + 5 pages and I was so happy that I didn't have to wait three weeks for a rejection just to skip the first two sentences.

Thank you Nathan Bransford, you’re my new favorite No.

I sent a travel column in to the LA Times two months ago, didn't hear back for two weeks, and assumed they weren't interested.  Yesterday I get an email saying "Unfortunately..."  Two months!  It's a daily newspaper!  Let me know if you don't want it, I'd like to shop the column around before global warming melts the ski resort.

25 minutes would be ideal, but I’d take one week.  I think four days is reasonable.  If it’s four weeks, that’s fine too, but please list that on your website so I can skip your agency.

I want a Yes, but if the answer is a No, I'd like to know now.  Don't you know?

At least it will help fill out my wall.  Another No on my slow path to ten thousand no’s.