Entering the world of published authors is completely foreign to me. Before this experience I went to college, took tests, worked at my desk, and moved up the corporate ladder. Publishing is completely different, there are so many different avenues. You can even veer off the path and do it completely on your own. This wasn‘t anything like what I expected. I thought the hard part was writing the book, little did I know that was only the beginning.
For me I knew I couldn’t absorb this industry and go off on my own. I also did not want to work with a publisher that pushed all of the work on me, I was a new mom with a full time job so that wasn't in the cards. I did know that I wanted to traditionally publish, but then came the infamous agent question. For those of you who don’t know, agents in the literary field are your advocate but they want you to be successful so they can be successful. With this drive they may put impossible tasks on writers and requirements that could derail the whole process for someone like me. I opted to go for unagented submissions.
I sat down and made a list pulling from my accounting background and utilizing excel. It took months to put together the requirements for each publisher. Some wanted query letters, some wanted a simple sentence, some wanted you to mail the full manuscript along with a cover letter. Then there were those that created a whole second writing assignment. I had to make a whole write up of my book chapter by chapter, marketing plan, compare my book to others, describe the reader, describe the market, and thousands of other descriptions. This churned out a 12 page document that never even received a response. That’s right after all this work you sling your book into the world and wait. I received some vanity publishing offers back immediately but these almost feel more like a scam than a publication. The rest trickled in slowly. One response was a phone call I received while in line for the Tower of Terror at Disney World. There is no control from the author to get responses, some don’t even let you follow up for months.
So I had to wait, I waited the required six months before following up on my book. At that point I heard back from 10 of the 25, none that offered the options that I wanted in publication. I opted to only resend and follow up on those that were only sent via email. Within 24 hours I heard back from Brighton Publishing in Arizona. Ironically it was a day I had received one too many spam calls so when I saw this number on my phone I answered annoyed ready to demand to be removed from this caller list. Turns out it wasn‘t a telemarketer at all, it was the best call of my life.
First they questioned if I had applied there before as they had a Jessica Smith in their contacts from a interview in the summer. But after we discussed the odd coincidence we talked about the contract. The contract that upon signing would start my debut book publication. It felt surreal to be on this call, I remember wandering around my living room sweating. I was shaking and jumping around with each word of the call. Hearing that they were interested in publishing and sending an advance was incredible.
So for those of you with big dreams, stay in it. Revisit it. You will get there and maybe even when you least expect it.
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