The First Contract is the Hardest

As a soon-to-be-published author, I’ve received a lot of congratulations from friends and colleagues, and I appreciate it very much. Interestingly, most of these well-wishers haven’t the faintest idea what it took to get published. Not that that should be their concern. After all, no one forced me to write fiction or to want my work read by other people. But it amuses me a little when people say “Oh, that’s wonderful!” as if I’d just gotten a recipe for strawberry preserves accepted into the May issue of Jam Makers Monthly.

Meanwhile, some of these same people ask me for advice about getting published so they can pass it on to relatives or friends with literary ambitions. So okay, here is my advice to aspiring novelists and short story writers:

Go to dental school.

If that’s not an option for you, then okay, listen to one man’s tale of how he finally got a reputable publisher….

Bottom line, I WAS LUCKY. How lucky? Well, the novel that’s about to be published (The Master Planets) is my third. My first two MSs received lots of nice comments from agents and publishers, but the bottom line was “No.” With Planets, I made a conscious, willful decision to write a story that you couldn’t put down.

And it still didn’t matter — at least at first.

My agent (I had one for this book) sent the MS to eleven of the top tier publishers. Their rejection notes were largely favorable (although some didn’t even bother to respond; I’ve since learned that that’s fairly common, even when you have an agent). The favorable rejections generally specified not knowing how to market the book. “Not exactly literary and not exactly commercial,” one said. This still puzzles me. Haven’t many novels been both? But it doesn't matter — no means no, my brothers and sisters, in any language.

Then my agent quit on me. Or rather, he simply stopped sending the manuscript out. Smaller publishers, he explained, were not in his area of expertise. We parted amicably.

Now I was without an agent. What to do?

My wife and I did what thousands of other authors have done: We scoured agent listings in Writer’s Market. We made a tidy profit for the post office on all those self-addressed stamped envelopes. I was rejected by no fewer than sixty agents (and that’s a low figure in comparison to the rejection stats of other published authors). Rejections became a bitter ritual; in time, they began to take on an aura of gallows humor. I would come home from work and see my own address label on an envelope lying on the floor under the mail slot, along with the utility bills and flyers for sales on new garden furniture. "I got a letter from myself," I'd exclaim with feigned amazement. There is something pathetic and lonely about the sight of your own handwriting as a harbinger of yet another rejection. Don’t kid yourself: Every rejection hurts. Over time the sharpness may become blunted, but a rubber mallet applied liberally to the cranium is still as painful as a stiletto thrust neatly into your side.

One day, we decided to just submit the MS directly to publishers. Of course, very few publishers will accept unsolicited manuscripts. Those who do are often small publishers. Or nearly Lilliputian, in some cases. When a publisher puts out only five to ten titles a year (or even just two or three), their needs tend to be extremely specific. Unless your book conforms to — oh, I don’t know — Christian science fiction with an uplifting message for heathens, then you don’t stand much of a chance.

I must stop for a moment to make something clear. None of what I’ve said is unfamiliar to writers. In fact, many writers have endured far worse than what I’ve been through. The sad truth is that many fine writers who should be published may never find a publisher. Why? Because the market for fiction is constantly shrinking. Yes, people are still reading fiction, but their tastes are becoming more and more parochial. Publishers don’t want to take a chance on an unknown entity — meaning you, if you have no name recognition or “platform,” as they say in the biz. If you are Hemingway’s great grandson with a stint in jail for armed robbery while waiting for the rapture in a cow pasture dug by alien engineers who were Hitler’s illegitimate children (and you wrote a book about it), you might get published. Otherwise….

So how did I finally break through?

My wife is indefatigable. For reasons that are totally beyond my comprehension, she, as Kenny Rogers once so elegantly put it, believes in me. She’s also (as she likes to say) a "goddamn terrier." Without her energy, creativity, marketing expertise, and sheer bloody grit, I’d probably still be looking at rejection letters among the bills and junk mail. Unfortunately, not all of us can be married to such a person — but all of us can BE that person, at least to some extent. I know this because my wife turned her "terrier" skills on me! I'll never be a marketing maven, God knows; but I've come to understand, and to begin practicing, the requisites of publicizing my own work. It just plain has to be done. If you want an audience badly enough, you'll do it, because you have to. In absence of a "Significant Other Terrier," read Steve Weber's Plug Your Book. It will give you great support in getting the word out with optimal efficiency and effectiveness. It will help you to be indefatigable. Because you have to be.

Anyway, only three months after sending to publishers unagented, The Master Planets received an offer from a small publisher in Canada. (Not an American publisher, take note. In fact, more and more American writers — Stephen King recently wrote about one in his Entertainment Weekly column — have had to find publishers in England, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.) Knowing that Kunati (described by Booklist as "a publisher to watch") was also reading the MS just then, I held back in hopes of hearing good news from them. As you may imagine, with a bird in the hand the wait was almost physically painful. I was overjoyed when Kunati offered a contract. I’ve been even more delighted with their work on its behalf ever since — and more so again when they won ForeWord's "Independent Publisher of the Year" award this year (2008).

Worthy of note: Kunati is also a Canadian publisher. Point taken, Stephen!

Kunati takes an innovative approach to marketing its authors. This is wonderful news for a debut novelist. If you are published with one of the top publishing houses, you will not receive any special advertising push. You will sink or swim on your own efforts, not on theirs. As far as they’re concerned, advertising money should be spent only on the "known entities" — i.e., authors who are already best-sellers. Literary manager Ted Weinstein has said it best: "The seven most important words in publishing are, 'It’s nice to see you again Oprah'!"

I wish I could be more sanguine about the prospects for new authors. But it’s a hard world out there, especially for fiction writers. The world is teeming with talented people, and a lot of them will do anything to get a break. Entertainment is more varied than ever before, and reading as a form of entertainment is becoming a tougher sell. Many of my students (I teach high school English) claim that reading “hurts their heads.” Unfortunately, the words-are-hurting-my-brain population is growing — a reality perhaps most famously lampooned by Stephen Colbert in his constant protests against "facts."

The Master Planets will be released this September. Will it sell? Will it find an audience? My wife thinks it will. She’s been right about some other things over these past two years. I hope she’s right about this. We'll do what we can to get it in front of the people. Then they'll decide what they think about it.