Take a Chance on Me

Tags

postaday2015, publishing, rejection

As I read my letter, I could hear ABBA singing in my head , phenomenal song by the way. Maybe I should have sent these publishers a recording a of the song, along with my introduction letter and my manuscript.

No matter who we are or what we are writing, if we are not established we are in a Catch 22 situation; the big publishers who have the money to take a risk on a newbie, do not accept unsolicited manuscripts, they only deal with literary agents and those publishers who are small but open to new authors and new ideas are very tight with their resources so they have to be so circumspect with their choices.

I don’t know what to say about literary agents because as of today I have only heard back from one and that one emailed me a rejection form letter; otherwise I haven’t heard from the twenty or thirty agents that I have sent my submission/query emails to; they don’t even want a physical copy, they only accept emails. It is frustrating to have to wait so long because I would like to know if any literary agent would be willing to take a chance on me. One response doesn’t mean anything, I need at least more then five before I change my game plan.

I love ABBA, they are so cool.

Even positive rejection can be tough

Tags

postaday2015, publishing, writing

Dear Laurie Nichols,

I am writing on behalf of Naomi Schneider, who wanted me to thank you for sending in your materials for A Progressive’s Thoughts.

Naomi has had a chance to review your proposal, and has asked me to inform you that (with much regret) we will not be able to take on your project for publication. Due to the limited number of available slots in your particular field, the Press must be extremely selective in its decision making process. Many excellent and interesting proposals such as yours are often turned away. This is in no way a judgment of your book’s quality, just its suitability for our list at this time.

We appreciate that you would consider us as a publishing partner and wish you the very best of luck with the book.

Sincerely,

Allison Wallace

Acquisitions

University of California Press

Ugghhhhhhhh! I know that this is only the seventh rejection letter that I have received. So far five of them have been as polite and encouraging as this one; however the other two, one was a form rejection letter by a literary agent and the other one was from Harvard, a polite rejection without any encouraging words.

What I have been doing in the meantime is look for more publishing avenues and I have two new websites that have asked me to join them because they have read my posts elsewhere.

I went to Google to see if I could find out how to decipher a rejection letter. I wanted to know if publishers in general wrote these types of letters to gently let everyone down or if I was correct in having hope from mine. What I found is that there is a big business in rejection; there are many websites waiting to help you get published. What I did learn is that there are many types of rejection letters and the shorter the letter, the less hopeful are the prospects. The key to this endeavor is to not give up.

On the fiction side of publishing, what I seriously need to do is divide my novel into chapters and send out a few samples and brace myself for a new round of rejection letters while I am still in the process of finishing the New York City chapters.

Work, work , work.

I will not give in to rejection

Tags

postaday2014, publishing, rejection letters

I have to say that this rejection letter was even more polite than my first one. I would hate to have to write rejection letters; I would agonize over the recipient’s feelings. Rejection letter writer is definitely one of the worst jobs out there. Happily enough I am not discouraged, the only discouraging thing about finding the right publisher is that there are so many more that do not accept unsolicited manuscripts than do and those who do not accept unsolicited manuscripts want you to have a literary agent.

I have been emailing literary agents both in Boston and New York and I am still waiting, though I did hear back from one and that was a form letter in the negative, what made me smirk was the upfront apology for being a form letter in the second sentence of the first paragraph; is it just me or was that odd?

I am still going to push and cajole myself into either a literary agent or getting published. I am not giving up.

Query letters and submissions

Tags

book, postaday2014, publishing, submissions

I have been busy, busy, busy. I sent my first query letter with a few chapters of my book last night via email. Fingers are crossed!!! Today I printed my letter of introduction, Introduction page to the book for my readers and a few chapters to send directly to NYU. The saga getting my pages printed oh boy!
Staples needs to up their game if they insist on calling themselves Your Copy/Print/Scan center. I have written everything in Google doc and since this isn’t quite new technology I assumed that Staples would easily take my USB and print out my documents; meaning my book, my letter and my introduction page but never assume is said for a reason. Staples doesn’t use software that recognizes Google Docs but I didn’t know this until it was too late.

I went into Staples intent on sitting at their computer work station and print out my documents myself, all you need is to insert a debit card; I logged into Google, opened my book and the other pages that I needed and clicked on print accepted the charge and then nothing. The printer was out of ink, I called over the copy sales associate and she told me that they were out of stock in the ink cartridge. I told her that I had already been charged for the printing job and she assured me that she would print it out for me at her station. This was the beginning of my lesson in the limits to what Staples can accomplish for those who write in Google docs, not much. After trying to email the documents, pulling them from the USB and still no printing to be had, the manager had a brainstorm and downloaded and converted my google docs to Microsoft and I got my book printed, however the format was completely off, but I wasn’t going to complain to the manager or the sales associate because they both worked so hard to get me my book printed.

If I had known that I would have had to convert these pages into Microsoft, I would have done that myself at the workstation beforehand but that is neither here nor there. I came home and printed what I needed myself and hooray my printer didn’t break down, didn’t have a hissy fit and didn’t try to eat the pages and didn’t run out of ink. Miracles do happen!

And now the ball is out of my court; this doesn’t mean that I am not going to keep sending out more letters, but I broke the ice so to speak.

Letters of introduction are so hard to write sometimes

Tags

books, postaday2014, publishing

Today I wrote the first draft of my letter to the publishing world and it reminded me so much of those dreaded personal essays that I used to sweat over when I was applying to colleges and then to law schools. I never knew what to say or how to say it. Essentially the essay is your chance to sell yourself and convince a few strangers that you deserve to be accepted. I never knew quite how to do it and when I would write those essays, I could feel myself get all twisted up inside searching for the right words, the right attitude and not quite sure of what that was.

Which is exactly what I am trying to do today, trying to find the words that will intrigue and persuade some stranger to give me and my work a chance. It is probably harder than writing the actual essays themselves.

Here is a sample:
I am submitting for your consideration a compilation of political essays covering a specific time period, between January 1st 2011 until the day after the 2012 Presidential election, The reason for which this time period was selected was to illustrate how, despite the passage of close to two years, we are still arguing the same issues and the same ideological and sociological differences still divide our congress and our news media. I as the writer do not have a professional background in politics which is why I feel that my book is unique, these are essays written by someone who is passionately interested in our political process and landscape, but is writing from home as a bystander and as someone who is impacted by decisions made from a far. My politics are those of the progressive camp, I write very critically of our news media sources and especially Fox news. My essays are all derived from comments that I have posted as a registered member of the Huffington Post community and cross-posted to my political blog A Progressive’s Thoughts found on WordPress.com.

I believe that my compilation of political essays would be a useful tool in any introductory course in journalism or political science; in this day and age of blogging, self published journals, newsletters and books, my book of essays is a natural extension of the new order in information diffusion.

I am reaching out to you at New York University Press because I am an alum and my time at New York University, particularly as a political science major, was an extraordinary time of learning and discovery. Therefore your publishing house was my first thought when I started exploring publishing options.

I have enclosed my book in hard copy form and I hope that you will take the time and read it. I sincerely hope that you enjoy these essays, each not longer than 250 words; two years is a mere blip on the radar of political life in any society, but it can give great insight as to the times and trials particularly after a catastrophic economic event as the Great Recession and the resulting policies, fight and showdowns that occurred afterwards.

This would be sent to New York University Press, but I don’t know if this is too much, not enough, how to tweak it. Of course I will tailor it to other publishing houses, this is the first draft.

If any you have any thoughts or criticisms please feel free to share.
Thanks 😀