Rejections

By Jeri Westerson

The dreaded rejection. Does it ever end? Even published authors are not immune from rejection, I'm sorry to say. Being published does not guarantee that you are gold. Short stories in magazines, other novels in other genres...there's a long list of ways to be rejected. I thought I'd share a few of my collection over the years. Some of you may know that I started off writing historical fiction and really couldn't get my foot in the door. But the kind of historicals I liked to write--ordinary people in extraordinary settings--seemed to translate better into mystery. So I had many years of rejections. Mostly, they are form rejection letters. Often, it is a note scrawled on my query (when such things were done on paper). These were for agents and editors for my first Crispin book.

I think my favorite one was a rubber stamp slammed onto my query letter that said, "Not Interested." They were so anxious to get this rejection back to me that they didn't even seal the envelope!

By far this was the most frequent statement I received--probably the most frequent statement any author receives--especially on form rejections: We don't believe it is suitable for our list at present.

Here are just a few.

• I think you have an interesting premise--a detective mystery set in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, I just didn't fall in love with the writing. 

• Thank you for sending this interesting piece, but we've decided to pass on the project.

• This manuscript is well written--the writing flows naturally, and it's a pleasure to read. But I'm afraid I think, on a basic level, if you've read one (medieval mystery), you've read most of them. I find, generally speaking, that medieval mysteries are just stories, often rather thin stories, dressed up in not-a-costume: Originality = poor, Setting = poor, Characters = almost good, Dialogue = good, Plotting = almost good, Excellence in writing = very good

• I thought this medieval mystery was well done but not compelling enough to overcome our marketing concerns (historical mysteries tend not to sell well for us in mass market.)

• The novel contained a convincing recreation of late medieval dialogue and atmosphere, but I'm afraid I wasn't as involved in the historical plot and characters as I needed to be. 

• We already have one British medieval series on our list and to add a second seems unwise.

• I truly enjoyed your story and look forward to reading another one. Unfortunately, this one does not meet our needs at this time.

• Protagonist seems motivated only by his immediate circumstances. We need more background angst to make him truly interesting. 

Really? Crispin needs more background angst? Boy, this is depressing me. Does it depress you? It's just as bad as any reviews that contradict each other. It just shows that opinions vary. I must remind myself that not only did I get a great agent at last, but also an editor and publisher who believed in the books. Despite the flaws of the publisher's marketing strategy, the books have all been nominated for peer and reader awards. Even with my most recent release, SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST, it's been nominated for tehe RT Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery, and Suspense Magazine named it one of the Best of 2013. Go figure. Even though the Crispin books may be down, they are definitely not out.

The takeaway from all of this is "Don't Give Up." I had many years of rejections from both agents and editors. Fourteen years of them. Just because one project doesn't work, be ready to move on to the next. You never know what will catch fire or with whom.

Are You Ready To Be Published?

When I spent my years writing novels that ended in the slushpile, I also spent a lot of time planning what would happen when one finally was published. And part of that planning was, of course, the nuts and bolts of completing a manuscript. Not only do you need to have it finished, but once it is, you need to sit down and complete the business of writing, that is, you need to write a synopsis. Not just the full synopsis for the benefit of your agent or for getting an agent, but you’ll need the 25 word pitch, the paragraph, the one page, and then the full. All of these are handy to have. The pitch is for queries and for networking when you answer that inevitable question, “What’s your book about?” Know it. Memorize it. Use it. The others are handy for query letters to agents. I also found the 25 word pitch useful in conjunction with the synopsis as a sort of introduction. I still use it on my outlines that get pitched to my editor. My agent loves them.

So you need all that to get an agent and for the agent to use to send to an editor. Given. But once that’s all done it’s time to think beyond the writing stage and start thinking about the marketing stage. When you sign a contract these days, very often the publisher wants to see a marketing plan from you.

Marketing plan, you say? Didn’t I already do the hard part and write the bloody novel? These days, that is only the beginning.

Part of that marketing plan is, of course, your online presence. Do you have a blog? Do you have a website? Are you on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads? Are you keeping up with the ever-changing industry?

First, let’s talk blog and website. But you aren’t published, you say. What would I have to put up on a website or a blog? True, a website won’t have much more than your bio, maybe some short stories you wrote, and perhaps a few awards. But even if all you have is a bio, it’s a good idea to nail it down and to get that all important domain name (places like GoDaddy.com can help you with that). As for content, tell us about your series. Give us an excerpt of the first chapter. It’s a chance to hone your skills, to create your public persona. Are you going to be outgoing and open? Funny? Mysteriously aloof? Once the book is published it’s almost too late to get that presence on the internet, so start getting that presence well before you even finish the manuscript.

Once the manuscript is done, it will be helpful to upload a discussion guide right onto your website. A book club I visited once said that readers want as much information as they can get on a book as well as about the author when they decide on a book for their group. And providing a discussion guide is one more step in offering added value about you and your novel. In fact, my publisher picked up my discussion guide right off of my website and put it in the paperback edition, and I have done subsequent discussion guides for each of my books ever since.

Same with the blog. Please don’t give us another newbie blog on “how I’m working hard to get published” with stories about your cat and your Aunt Sadie. Unless your Aunt Sadie is a famous actress or explorer, leave her out of it. In fact, get used to being a professional. Lose the personal Facebook page or blog. Do you really want your family, your kids splashed all over the internet? Frame your blog on your book series. Is it about a detective who quilts? Then let it be about quilts. Is it a thriller set in L.A.? Then become the expert on the down and dirty of Los Angeles. You are the expert on whatever it is you write about.

And speaking of being an expert, you will want to get yourself speaking engagements at your local and not-so-local libraries, at professional organization luncheons, at any place they want to have you. And so you need to prepare some presentations, something that says a little about you and a little about your books. You can’t always do a reading of your book and, let’s face it, a lot of authors are pants at reading aloud. Have something interesting to offer by way of a presentation. I talk about medieval history and the myths people have about the era. And I bring props, my medieval weaponry. You can bet that gets an audience’s attention. Word gets out that your talk is interesting and fun. You will get asked to a lot of places. Again, remember you are the expert in whatever it is you are writing about. If you are writing a cooking mystery, then get ready with that hot plate and start talking...and cooking.

Just as you’ll need several lengths of pitches, so, too, will you need several versions of your talk. Depending on the venue, you might need a fifteen minute talk, half an hour, or full hour. Be ready and flexible to talk about you and your book in any version. But don’t hard sell it. You’re selling you as much as the book itself.

Is all this part of your marketing plan? Yes, it is! Include your marketing strategy all the places you plan to go to talk about your book and what that presentation will be. Do you have an email list to announce about your book release? You should be working on amassing that. Goodreads friends? Friends on Facebook? Do you Tweet? Do you have followers? These are the things to start on now before the book is in print.


Is it a lot of work? Yes. Is it rewarding to have your book on bookshelves and in people’s hands, in audiences that have come to hear you talk? You bet it is. But it happens because you are prepared. Prepared to hit the ground running.

Everybody's Talking

by Sheila Connolly

Sandy's still recuperating, but she'll be back on Wednesdays by next week.

Time was, writers huddled in freezing garrets, scribbling with a quill pen, a lead pencil, or, later, pounding on a manual typewriter. They were solitary creatures, listening only to the voices in their heads (when they weren’t out working at menial jobs to support their creative habit) and trying to set the words down on paper. There was, of course, only one copy originally, or maybe a smudgy carbon copy or two once the mechanical device came along. This soon-tattered document circulated amongst editors and publishers, one at a time, gathering coffee-stains and dog-ears along the way, until it was judged too pathetic and the poor writer had to laboriously reproduce it.

I grew up with the oft-repeated tale from my parents, that when they were first married and living in New York City, they lived in the same building as A Writer (this was said in reverent tones). As I recall, it was Robert Ruark, who enjoyed some small fame in the 1950s and 1960s. Maybe he actually lived in the building, or maybe it was his New York pied a terre—it doesn’t really matter. What I remember is the attitude my parents held toward their neighbor, even though I don’t think they ever exchanged a word with him. He was A Writer; he was Special.

Writers were for centuries mysterious, enigmatic figures. But that’s not true any more, because, thanks largely to the Internet, we all know each other now, or at least, know of each other. What’s more, we all communicate with each other. A lot. We blog together, we email each other, we follow each other from list to list. There are no secrets any more.

This is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, we have a terrific support network—people who know what we’re going through and can commiserate about our rejections and celebrate our successes with us. We also pool agent, editor and publisher information (which I’m not sure those people have quite figured out yet, but that’s fine). Most of us who have books in print know that publishing houses dole out details with a small spoon. We have to fight to find out how many books we’ve sold, how many returns there have been, how our paper darlings are performing when compared to the rest of the herd. So to be able to compare notes with our peers; to get a glimpse into what “success” is; and to be able to cheer for a struggling newcomer, is wonderful and immensely helpful to us all, wherever we are in our career path.

But the easy availability of information also has a downside, or at least a potential one.

We all know the rules: grab the reader up front with a strong hook; if you’re writing mysteries, put the body in the first chapter; avoid backstory at all costs; show, don’t tell; end each chapter with a hook; end the book with another hook so the reader will want to buy the next book in the series. And so on. We all participate in the same online classes, for plotting, building characters, constructing the hero’s story arc. We all know which books on writing are recommended—and there are plenty of them. We all know which blogs to follow for insider information. We all know which agents are hot, and which publishers are cutting lines. In other words, we all know too much.

One of the things we know is that agents—the gatekeepers to publication—reject 98 per cent of the submissions they receive because they don’t stand out. They may be in the correct form and format, they may be competently written, polite and businesslike—but they’re all saying the same thing. Paragraph 1: please consider my time travel romantic suspense, complete at 102,000 words. Paragraph 2: Voluptuous Jane meets Hunky John on a space platform somewhere in time and they fall instantly in love. Unfortunately they both lose each other’s temporal spatial coordinates (for 287 pages). Will these star-crossed (star-crossing?) lovers find each other again without disrupting the time-space continuum? Paragraph 3: Eager writer is uniquely qualified to write this book because s/he has extensive experience in time travel, love, and IPS (that’s Intergalactic Position Systems).

And this is the norm. The swamped agent eyeballs the email query and hits delete in a nanosecond, because she’s seen it literally thousands of times before.

In short, we’ve homogenized writing. Are we better or worse off than we were when we writers labored in isolation? Or, are the books that do make it into print better or worse? We’d love to hear your opinions.

Editors: Underpaid and Overworked

Sandra Parshall

Do you think of publishing as a glamorous business, with book editors reigning supreme? Do you imagine editors lingering over lunch at fabulous restaurants, going home at night to gorgeous highrise apartments in New York City and escaping on the weekend to their spacious second homes on the shore?

The reality doesn’t quite match that fantasy.

Every year, the Publishers Weekly survey of salaries in the book business produces the same conclusions: editors, the most important people in the process of bringing books to the public, make the lowest salaries; and women earn far less on average than men. These two facts go hand in hand, because the great majority of editorial employees are female.

According to PW’s figures for 2006, the average salary for men in all aspects of publishing was $99,442, compared to $63,747 for women. Men received average pay increases of 4.6% last year, and women averaged 4.4%.

The biggest salaries go to management, operations, and sales/marketing personnel, and the larger the publisher, the higher the salaries. Trade publishers pay median salaries of $118,400 to management personnel and $45,750 to editors. This striking difference extends beyond straight salary to bonuses. In 2006, 31% of editorial employees received bonuses, and the median amount was $3,000, while 53% of management personnel received additional compensation, the median amount being $20,000.

Most publishing salaries are low by comparison to other businesses, so it’s not surprising that money is the main source of job dissatisfaction, followed by increased workloads, lack of recognition, management problems, and long hours. Only 49% of the people surveyed said they were extremely or very satisfied with their jobs. Almost half, 48%, said they either expect to be working elsewhere two years from now or were unsure about their futures. If they stay in publishing, editorial employees who started out earning $30,100 per year might work their way up to a $71,000 paycheck after 10 years. Management is better paid from the start -- an average of $62,500 in the first three years, rising to $149,000 for those with 10 years or more on the job.

Where’s the real money in publishing? At the very top, of course. For example, the president and CEO of John Wiley earned total compensation of $2,024,613 in the fiscal year ending April 30, 2006. The chairman of Penguin made $2,519,400.

What drives editors, the people at the low end of the pay scale, to work long hours for little recognition? I suspect it might be the same thing that drives writers to write even though they may never become famous or get rich from it: a simple love of books and the written word. When publishing no longer attracts people like that, we'll all be in trouble.