The literary agency Redhammer is one I ran across awhile back; until recently, their page on submissions said they didn't accept unsolicited queries and then went on to say that if you're looking for a lit agency that does ... and then they supplied a rather long list of UK literary agencies.
It was a useful resource for me: the agencies that Redhammer listed on this page were agencies that I had not come across in AgentQuery or QueryTracker or the other sources I've relied on, for the most part.
Anyway, just recently the Redhammer folks changed tack and started accepting what they call "pop-up submissions": stating that most lit agents don't read much more than this much before making a decision anyhow, they ask for just 500 character's worth of query letter and the first 600 (now upped to 700) words as writing sample.
But they make their decisions live so you can listen to their evaluation and decision process.
So I opted to participate.
The whole August 5 program
Where they start reviewing my query and 1st 600 words
In general they said nice things about my writing — that it flowed easily with a natural looseness rarely found in unsolicited submissions; a couple of the participants complained that the main character wasn't as frightened (in particular) or otherwise reacting emotionally to what was happening as people began beating him up; and Pete, the primary honcho at Redhammer, said the main reason he could not represent my book is that it's not a type of book he has any experience representing and wouldn't know where to begin in trying to get a publisher for it.
I like the reassuring feedback about my writing, that's very nice to hear.
Derek's (i.e., my) reaction in the fight is a bit more complicated. The near absence of affect is realistic and intentional; years of unexpected out-of-nowhere hostility and violence is numbing, and early in the book I have Derek trying to turn to authorities for help and basically being told to just be a good sport and weather it. This is one of the tales within a tale in this book, that victims of this kind of alienating treatment learn to shut down. Obviously I can't explain that in the three pages' worth of intro, let alone in the 600 word sample that Redhammer permitted me, but I'm choosing to regard it as a feature, not a bug — that readers will see it (as one of the Redhammer reviewers suggested) as an aspect of the character, or will notice it and be curious about who this person is who experiences being beaten up in such a matter-of-fact manner. In the book as a whole, I don't explicitly say that Derek is shutting down emotionally or becoming stoic about other people being hostile, but in the best tradition of "show don't tell" I hope the sequence of events paints that for the observant reader.
And the notion that one main barrier to obtaining lit agents to represent my book is that this isn't the kind of book they're equipped to market to publishers is what I've been suspecting for quite some time now. I will continue to query lit agents but my main hopes lie with my queries to small publishers.
Incidentally, a couple people have suggested that I make YouTube videos of myself reading my blog posts. I'm seriously considering it. I could go back and do all the serious ones about gender and being a gender invert, and maybe some about writing and trying to market the book. I dont know if I'd get any more traffic on YouTube than I get here, but possibly I would.
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Showing posts with label literary agent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary agent. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2018
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
The Art of the Coming Out Story: Seeking the Sweet Point
A pair of somewhat-recent rejection slips:
-- from Black Rose, a small independent publisher
-- from Judith Weber of Sobol Weber, a literary agency
I'm not sure how I can do a better job of making the characters "come to life" and bringing the reader to the point of living events with my main character Derek while at the same time avoiding making it an even more "extreme narrative" that reads "like a diary" in which readers have to "slug through the pity".
Meanwhile, I'm continuing to participate in author's reading events at Amateur Writers of Long Island as described in this earlier blog post. I read a 1500-word excerpt from the 8th-grade chapter early in the book and the other authors gave me much more pleasant feedback than the publishers and lit agents:
Still, among the rejection letters I've received over the years, there have been two main themes (aside from form letters and short choppy "not for me" replies): that I don't have enough of a platform and that the story doesn't sufficiently grab the reader and draw them in.
Well, that kind of feedback tends to make me think of perhaps letting go of my self-imposed barriers on manuscript length. Because for any individual event, writing it as a vivid scene with dialog and main-character mental processes and feelings and sound and smells and colors and all that means taking up more words to do it. In a vintage-2014 blog post I explained why. I'm still sure that the story I'm telling is the story I want to tell (as opposed to trying to include less). So the price tag for punching it up further is, at a minimum, to stop worrying about manuscript length and just let it take as many pages (and words) as it takes, you know?
Many of the books I've enjoyed the most have been quite a bit longer than The Story of Q in its present incarnation: Marilyn French's The Women's Room at 135,700 words (526 pages), Marge Piercy's Small Changes at 171,400 words (562 pages), Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone which comes in at 116700 words (465 pages). Mine has hovered around 97,000 words which would probably take up somewhere between 320 and 375 pages. Hmm, I could include a lot more dialog in the scene where the girl from Boston comes to visit and she become the love interest I obsess about... and I could insert some scenes with Boy Scouts illustrating more about how I was sort of not fully merging and kind of holding myself back from them, maybe a scene where the other boys are telling dirty jokes or something, and maybe some scenes at pot parties where I get into philosophical conversations with some of the girls while we're stoned...
But I also looked at some of the classic coming-out stories, to compare for length within the same genre, and that's a bit scary.
Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle ("Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America--and living happily ever after") is only 246 pages (63,960 words).
The Best Little Boy in the World by Andrew Tobias ("The classic account of growing up gay in America. An autobiography in which he spoke of his experiences as a gay boy and young man. He published it under the pen name "John Reid" to avoid the repercussions of being openly gay") was 247 pages (64,220 words).
Jan Morris wrote Conundrum ("One of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris’s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.") in a mere 176 pages (45,760 words).
Mario Martino did Emergence ("The autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual, written as a cooperative effort by the author with a medical journalist. It is one individual's story of the transition from female to male") in 273 pages (70,890 words).
The Last Time I Wore a Dress ("At fifteen years old, Daphne Scholinski was committed to a mental institution and awarded the dubious diagnosis of "Gender Identity Disorder." She spent three years--and over a million dollars of insurance--"treating" the problem...with makeup lessons and instructions in how to walk like a girl.") was 224 pages (55,552 words).
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg ("Woman or man? This internationally acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of Jess Goldberg, a masculine girl growing up in the "Ozzie and Harriet" McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town") was 308 pages (77,000 words).
And Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There ("The exuberant memoir of a man named James who became a woman named Jenny. She’s Not There is the story of a person changing genders, the story of a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret; above all, it is a love story") ran to 352 pages (91,520 words).
None of those is quite as long as The Story of Q. Is that worrisome? Relevant? I don't know for sure, but it doesn't make me very comfortable with the notion of making my book yet longer in pursuit of more vivid scenes and paragraphs.
I had two publishers sign contracts to publish this book; I need to remember that and not blame my writing for the rejection slips I get.
I'm looking for the sweet point, where I've laid down the trajectory of experiences I went through that culminated in me deciding I had a different kind of identity than the people around me, and explained that in enough detail and enough emotional vividness to convey that.
————————
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It is written in what I will refer to as an "extreme" narrative, i.e. it reads like a diary. The promise of an interesting read on the subject of a young man's struggle to determine his sexuality is never realized because the author lapses into a commentary on his being bullied by those who prey on the "undecided" identity seekers. One thing that makes this interesting is that although the author identifies more as a female, his orientation is clearly heterosexual. Readers may well be inclined to 'slug' through the pity in order to see how his obvious conflicts are resolved. Three stars because it is at best a 'possible."
-- from Black Rose, a small independent publisher
You’ve struck on relevancy with your premise. The story of coming-of-age trans during the 1970’s while battling a prejudice environment is compelling, but there still needs to be a gripping arc to carry the narrative. The characters didn’t come to life for me. I felt more like I was being told events, rather than living them with Derek.
-- from Judith Weber of Sobol Weber, a literary agency
I'm not sure how I can do a better job of making the characters "come to life" and bringing the reader to the point of living events with my main character Derek while at the same time avoiding making it an even more "extreme narrative" that reads "like a diary" in which readers have to "slug through the pity".
Meanwhile, I'm continuing to participate in author's reading events at Amateur Writers of Long Island as described in this earlier blog post. I read a 1500-word excerpt from the 8th-grade chapter early in the book and the other authors gave me much more pleasant feedback than the publishers and lit agents:
Your ability to express your vulnerability is amazing! It flows with ease.
Well-written, strong emotions. Sad, powerful.
Very well written and effective. Keep at it, it's near perfect.
Still, among the rejection letters I've received over the years, there have been two main themes (aside from form letters and short choppy "not for me" replies): that I don't have enough of a platform and that the story doesn't sufficiently grab the reader and draw them in.
-- Nora Long for / Susan Cohen at Writer's house
We were impressed by The Story of Q's holistic approach to the underwritten topic of growing up queer. However, we struggled to engage emotionally with Derek because of the lack of specificity in prose. For example, it was difficult to understand why, in middle school, Derek found boys' behavior to be "bad" (rather than merely displeasing or disruptive), when Derek had not expressed a desire to be "good" or why Derek was ostracized growing up without knowing how exactly he was teased in each school he attended.
I read you query with interest. Your premise is unique and definitely stands out! Unfortunately, the writing style did not draw me into your story's world as much as I would have liked.-- Johanna Hickle at Talcott Notch
Well, that kind of feedback tends to make me think of perhaps letting go of my self-imposed barriers on manuscript length. Because for any individual event, writing it as a vivid scene with dialog and main-character mental processes and feelings and sound and smells and colors and all that means taking up more words to do it. In a vintage-2014 blog post I explained why. I'm still sure that the story I'm telling is the story I want to tell (as opposed to trying to include less). So the price tag for punching it up further is, at a minimum, to stop worrying about manuscript length and just let it take as many pages (and words) as it takes, you know?
Many of the books I've enjoyed the most have been quite a bit longer than The Story of Q in its present incarnation: Marilyn French's The Women's Room at 135,700 words (526 pages), Marge Piercy's Small Changes at 171,400 words (562 pages), Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone which comes in at 116700 words (465 pages). Mine has hovered around 97,000 words which would probably take up somewhere between 320 and 375 pages. Hmm, I could include a lot more dialog in the scene where the girl from Boston comes to visit and she become the love interest I obsess about... and I could insert some scenes with Boy Scouts illustrating more about how I was sort of not fully merging and kind of holding myself back from them, maybe a scene where the other boys are telling dirty jokes or something, and maybe some scenes at pot parties where I get into philosophical conversations with some of the girls while we're stoned...
But I also looked at some of the classic coming-out stories, to compare for length within the same genre, and that's a bit scary.
Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle ("Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America--and living happily ever after") is only 246 pages (63,960 words).
The Best Little Boy in the World by Andrew Tobias ("The classic account of growing up gay in America. An autobiography in which he spoke of his experiences as a gay boy and young man. He published it under the pen name "John Reid" to avoid the repercussions of being openly gay") was 247 pages (64,220 words).
Jan Morris wrote Conundrum ("One of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris’s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.") in a mere 176 pages (45,760 words).
Mario Martino did Emergence ("The autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual, written as a cooperative effort by the author with a medical journalist. It is one individual's story of the transition from female to male") in 273 pages (70,890 words).
The Last Time I Wore a Dress ("At fifteen years old, Daphne Scholinski was committed to a mental institution and awarded the dubious diagnosis of "Gender Identity Disorder." She spent three years--and over a million dollars of insurance--"treating" the problem...with makeup lessons and instructions in how to walk like a girl.") was 224 pages (55,552 words).
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg ("Woman or man? This internationally acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of Jess Goldberg, a masculine girl growing up in the "Ozzie and Harriet" McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town") was 308 pages (77,000 words).
And Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There ("The exuberant memoir of a man named James who became a woman named Jenny. She’s Not There is the story of a person changing genders, the story of a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret; above all, it is a love story") ran to 352 pages (91,520 words).
None of those is quite as long as The Story of Q. Is that worrisome? Relevant? I don't know for sure, but it doesn't make me very comfortable with the notion of making my book yet longer in pursuit of more vivid scenes and paragraphs.
I had two publishers sign contracts to publish this book; I need to remember that and not blame my writing for the rejection slips I get.
I'm looking for the sweet point, where I've laid down the trajectory of experiences I went through that culminated in me deciding I had a different kind of identity than the people around me, and explained that in enough detail and enough emotional vividness to convey that.
————————
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Index of all Blog Posts
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Update on My Get-Book-Published Endeavors
I wrote a book about being genderqueer and I'm trying to get it published.
Those of you who've been reading my blog for awhile now are well aware of that, but I have recently joined several Facebook groups where I may not have mentioned that, and I'm now echoing my blog in more places in hopes of reaching a wider audience... and it's been awhile since I blogged about the book itself. Most of my recent posts have been about some aspect of gender or genderqueer experience.
Anyway, yeah, it's a memoir (nonfiction, my own story), a coming-of-age and coming-out story, about 97,000 words long (probably about 325 pages, give or take). And I've been querying literary agents since 2013 and small publishers (the sort that you can query directly) since 2015.
Here's where things are at at the moment:
THE REQUEST FOR A FULL
Every rare once in a while my queries to literary agents have resulted in a request to see and evaluate the full manuscript, an event known in the world of authors and author-aspirants as a "request for a full". It's akin to when sending in your resume results in an actual job interview. I've had six of those so far.
The most recent was from Lucinda Karter of Jennifer Lyons Lit Agency (or, more precisely, from her assistant Jadie Stillwell), on November 17 of last year. I sent in the full manuscript and didn't hear a peep, so on December 8 I sent a follow-up inquiry, just asking for confirmation that they actually received it. They had; Stillwell apologized for being behind and said they hadn't had a chance to look at it but would get to it in due course.
At some point in the spring, I went back to querying lit agents, if only to distract myself from the waiting.
Eventually, the 8th of March rolled around, and it had now been three months since I'd heard anything from them and four months since I'd queried them, so I sent a follow-up email, inquiring if I had perhaps missed a critical piece of correspondence. On March 20th, still not hearing anything, I repeated that inquiry, and on March 30th I got a somewhat formletterish "thanks for the opportunity to read but unable to fully connect with the characters and will have to pass" rejection letter.
THE DOLDRUMS
One of the literary agents that I subsequently queried wrote back to say my proposal looks interesting but that they have a policy of only considering material submitted to them exclusively — so did anyone else have it? Of course they did. So in a back-and-forth exchange of emails we established that they'd be happy if I waited until any still-outstanding queries were rejected or else timed out with at least six weeks elapsing from the time I queried them, and then subsequently didn't send any other queries out until they'd had a chance to make their evaluation. That point will be on April the 12th, two days from now. I'll let them know on the 12th that they now have exlusivity and then an additional six weeks will tick by before their exclusivity-window expires.
It's a long shot but all inquiries to lit agents are long shots. I decided to go for it. But it's meant not doing anything as far as lit agents are concerned from week to week and (at this point) month to month.
It's hard to feel fired-up and like you're doing something towards getting a book published when you're just sitting around waiting for a calendar date to crawl by.
Meanwhile, with the publishers, I'm in the same damn situation: there was a publisher I wanted to query, one that was highly recommended on the queer / nonbinary / minority orientation and sexual orientation and intersex FaceBook groups as a good solid publisher for LGBTQIA titles. They, too, have a policy of exclusivity. So I had to wait until the previous publisher submission (to Kensington Books) expired from lack of activity and then sent them my query, which they've now had since January 23. They want 90 days to evaluate manuscripts, so they've got exclusivity until April 23, another thirteen days from now.
So I've been sitting on my thumb, metaphorically speaking, not sending anything to anyone and watching the damn calendar.
BROAD OVERVIEW / REVIEW OF THE SITUATION
I have twice had a publisher sign a contract with me to publish this book. Generally what happens when a publisher signs a contract with an author is that the book goes into print. In the first instance, the publisher, Ellora's Cave, went out of business and revoked all pending books. In the second instance, with NineStar Press, the editor wanted to cut the first third of the book entirely, and we were unable to establish a working relationship. (I experienced the editor as heavy-handed and insulting, and I gather that he found me arrogant and impossible to work with). So I asked them revert my rights back to me.
This is extremely frustrating, as you can probably imagine. The relief and excitement and joy of having a publisher pick up your book, the anticipation of seeing it listed on Amazon and perhaps on a book stand in a book store, the enthusiastic planning of promotional talks and book-signings and lecture tours and all that... ripped out from beneath me.
I was going to write that this isnt fun any more. That's misleading: it was never any fun, this process of trying to sell agents and publishers on the idea of publishing my book. I detest this entire process, just as I hate doing job searches. I have said in the past that trying to sell myself like this ranks right up there with cleaning all the toilets in Grand Central Station with my tongue. So "isn't fun any more" isn't the applicable phrase here. What's changed, I think, is that I won't be able to feel any of that relief, excitement, anticipation or joy when I finally do once again have a publishing contract. At this point I don't think it will seem real until the damn thing's actually in print and I am holding a copy in my hands. Maybe not even then.
"Well", you may be thinking, "why don't you just self-publish?"
It's an easy enough process to create a print run of my book. I even have a routine that allows me to print the whole book onto 5.5 x 8.5 format, two pages to a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, double-sided, so it can be whacked neatly in two with an industrial sheet cutter and bound. I could get bids and go with the cheapest bid, and that's before I even look into companies specifically geared to help authors self-publish.
Electronic printing is even more effortless, and free. I can generate a PDF at will, and Amazon (among others) will readily help me convert it to other standard eBook formats for paid download.
None of that is at all difficult. Most of that is not relevant.
The difficult, and relevant, part of what makes publishing different than mere printing is distribution and publicity. Running off five thousand copies of my book (and/or generating an eBook for electronic distribution) doesn't get it into people's hands. It doesn't get it reviewed. There are human activites that successfully overcome those barriers, promotional activities. I'm not good at them. If I were good at them, this would be a very popular blog with hundreds or thousands of weekly readers. It isn't. I'm not.
I'll still have to gear up to plan and execute a promotional campaign even with a traditional-model publisher, unless I get a large publisher on-board (unlikely); but even a small publisher makes the book "authentic" to the world of reviewers and opens up opportunities for distribution and consideration. I'm particularly interested in seeing it picked up as reading material for gender studies, LGBTQ studies, feminist theory, and other related academic course work, and hopefully also to find shelf space in LGBT community centers and support group meeting spaces and whatnot.
READINGS
One thing I have been doing more of lately is attending authors' groups where people bring samples of their work-in-progress and read from them and get feedback from the others there. I've been attending the Long Island Writers' Guild and the Amateur Writers of Long Island in recent weeks. Of the two, I like the format used by the latter somewhat better, as they allow up to 1800 word samples to be read and spend more time discussing each selection before moving on to the next. I've enjoyed them both, though.
The feedback I've received is encouraging. The people say my writing in general is vivid and effective, the characters and their behaviors and dialog strongly drawn, the paragraphs and phrases well-constructed. That's not to say I haven't received useful criticism, of the sort "you could do more of this up here before he says that" and "I found it a bit confusing when it jumped to this next scene, is that supposed to be later the same week or what?" and so on. But the overall takeaway is very good: my writing does what I want it to do, it works. At least in 1800-word chunks. (I still yearn for more feedback on the entire book as a satisfying or less-than-satisfying whole).
STATS
total queries to Lit Agents (counting requeries): 1171
As Nonfiction, total: 944
As Fiction, total: 227
total queries to Publishers: 30
————————
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————————
Index of all Blog Posts
Those of you who've been reading my blog for awhile now are well aware of that, but I have recently joined several Facebook groups where I may not have mentioned that, and I'm now echoing my blog in more places in hopes of reaching a wider audience... and it's been awhile since I blogged about the book itself. Most of my recent posts have been about some aspect of gender or genderqueer experience.
Anyway, yeah, it's a memoir (nonfiction, my own story), a coming-of-age and coming-out story, about 97,000 words long (probably about 325 pages, give or take). And I've been querying literary agents since 2013 and small publishers (the sort that you can query directly) since 2015.
Here's where things are at at the moment:
THE REQUEST FOR A FULL
Every rare once in a while my queries to literary agents have resulted in a request to see and evaluate the full manuscript, an event known in the world of authors and author-aspirants as a "request for a full". It's akin to when sending in your resume results in an actual job interview. I've had six of those so far.
The most recent was from Lucinda Karter of Jennifer Lyons Lit Agency (or, more precisely, from her assistant Jadie Stillwell), on November 17 of last year. I sent in the full manuscript and didn't hear a peep, so on December 8 I sent a follow-up inquiry, just asking for confirmation that they actually received it. They had; Stillwell apologized for being behind and said they hadn't had a chance to look at it but would get to it in due course.
At some point in the spring, I went back to querying lit agents, if only to distract myself from the waiting.
Eventually, the 8th of March rolled around, and it had now been three months since I'd heard anything from them and four months since I'd queried them, so I sent a follow-up email, inquiring if I had perhaps missed a critical piece of correspondence. On March 20th, still not hearing anything, I repeated that inquiry, and on March 30th I got a somewhat formletterish "thanks for the opportunity to read but unable to fully connect with the characters and will have to pass" rejection letter.
THE DOLDRUMS
One of the literary agents that I subsequently queried wrote back to say my proposal looks interesting but that they have a policy of only considering material submitted to them exclusively — so did anyone else have it? Of course they did. So in a back-and-forth exchange of emails we established that they'd be happy if I waited until any still-outstanding queries were rejected or else timed out with at least six weeks elapsing from the time I queried them, and then subsequently didn't send any other queries out until they'd had a chance to make their evaluation. That point will be on April the 12th, two days from now. I'll let them know on the 12th that they now have exlusivity and then an additional six weeks will tick by before their exclusivity-window expires.
It's a long shot but all inquiries to lit agents are long shots. I decided to go for it. But it's meant not doing anything as far as lit agents are concerned from week to week and (at this point) month to month.
It's hard to feel fired-up and like you're doing something towards getting a book published when you're just sitting around waiting for a calendar date to crawl by.
Meanwhile, with the publishers, I'm in the same damn situation: there was a publisher I wanted to query, one that was highly recommended on the queer / nonbinary / minority orientation and sexual orientation and intersex FaceBook groups as a good solid publisher for LGBTQIA titles. They, too, have a policy of exclusivity. So I had to wait until the previous publisher submission (to Kensington Books) expired from lack of activity and then sent them my query, which they've now had since January 23. They want 90 days to evaluate manuscripts, so they've got exclusivity until April 23, another thirteen days from now.
So I've been sitting on my thumb, metaphorically speaking, not sending anything to anyone and watching the damn calendar.
BROAD OVERVIEW / REVIEW OF THE SITUATION
I have twice had a publisher sign a contract with me to publish this book. Generally what happens when a publisher signs a contract with an author is that the book goes into print. In the first instance, the publisher, Ellora's Cave, went out of business and revoked all pending books. In the second instance, with NineStar Press, the editor wanted to cut the first third of the book entirely, and we were unable to establish a working relationship. (I experienced the editor as heavy-handed and insulting, and I gather that he found me arrogant and impossible to work with). So I asked them revert my rights back to me.
This is extremely frustrating, as you can probably imagine. The relief and excitement and joy of having a publisher pick up your book, the anticipation of seeing it listed on Amazon and perhaps on a book stand in a book store, the enthusiastic planning of promotional talks and book-signings and lecture tours and all that... ripped out from beneath me.
I was going to write that this isnt fun any more. That's misleading: it was never any fun, this process of trying to sell agents and publishers on the idea of publishing my book. I detest this entire process, just as I hate doing job searches. I have said in the past that trying to sell myself like this ranks right up there with cleaning all the toilets in Grand Central Station with my tongue. So "isn't fun any more" isn't the applicable phrase here. What's changed, I think, is that I won't be able to feel any of that relief, excitement, anticipation or joy when I finally do once again have a publishing contract. At this point I don't think it will seem real until the damn thing's actually in print and I am holding a copy in my hands. Maybe not even then.
"Well", you may be thinking, "why don't you just self-publish?"
It's an easy enough process to create a print run of my book. I even have a routine that allows me to print the whole book onto 5.5 x 8.5 format, two pages to a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, double-sided, so it can be whacked neatly in two with an industrial sheet cutter and bound. I could get bids and go with the cheapest bid, and that's before I even look into companies specifically geared to help authors self-publish.
Electronic printing is even more effortless, and free. I can generate a PDF at will, and Amazon (among others) will readily help me convert it to other standard eBook formats for paid download.
None of that is at all difficult. Most of that is not relevant.
The difficult, and relevant, part of what makes publishing different than mere printing is distribution and publicity. Running off five thousand copies of my book (and/or generating an eBook for electronic distribution) doesn't get it into people's hands. It doesn't get it reviewed. There are human activites that successfully overcome those barriers, promotional activities. I'm not good at them. If I were good at them, this would be a very popular blog with hundreds or thousands of weekly readers. It isn't. I'm not.
I'll still have to gear up to plan and execute a promotional campaign even with a traditional-model publisher, unless I get a large publisher on-board (unlikely); but even a small publisher makes the book "authentic" to the world of reviewers and opens up opportunities for distribution and consideration. I'm particularly interested in seeing it picked up as reading material for gender studies, LGBTQ studies, feminist theory, and other related academic course work, and hopefully also to find shelf space in LGBT community centers and support group meeting spaces and whatnot.
READINGS
One thing I have been doing more of lately is attending authors' groups where people bring samples of their work-in-progress and read from them and get feedback from the others there. I've been attending the Long Island Writers' Guild and the Amateur Writers of Long Island in recent weeks. Of the two, I like the format used by the latter somewhat better, as they allow up to 1800 word samples to be read and spend more time discussing each selection before moving on to the next. I've enjoyed them both, though.
The feedback I've received is encouraging. The people say my writing in general is vivid and effective, the characters and their behaviors and dialog strongly drawn, the paragraphs and phrases well-constructed. That's not to say I haven't received useful criticism, of the sort "you could do more of this up here before he says that" and "I found it a bit confusing when it jumped to this next scene, is that supposed to be later the same week or what?" and so on. But the overall takeaway is very good: my writing does what I want it to do, it works. At least in 1800-word chunks. (I still yearn for more feedback on the entire book as a satisfying or less-than-satisfying whole).
STATS
total queries to Lit Agents (counting requeries): 1171
Rejections: 1092
Outstanding: 79
As Nonfiction, total: 944
Rejections: 866
Outstanding: 78
As Fiction, total: 227
Rejections: 226
Outstanding: 1
total queries to Publishers: 30
Rejections: 22
Outstanding: 1
No Reply 3+ Months: 6
Pub Contract Signed, went out of business: 1
Pub Contract Signed, rights reverted: 1
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