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A New Publishing Contract--a tale of persistence
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Hi Beth,Congratulations both for the honorable mention in the contest and for the contract.
I am from Spain so it was very interesting for me to learn about the contest. My books so far have been in Fantasy/Historical Fiction, but it is good to know of other genres/venues.
Happy writing,
Carmen
A big congratulations on getting your contract, Beth! It really is hard to find a publisher for novellas, and your submission stories sound painfully familiar to me. But you've prevailed!I found a publisher to print my mysteries, Taxed to Death and Fatal Encryption in e-format. Fatal Encryption's now on Mobipocket and Kindle, and I've apparently reached bestseller status on Kindle. How that happened, I don't know. Maybe it means I sold five copies last week.
Taxed to Death will be released later this month.
Anyway, good on you for persevering and succeeding!
After basking in the glow of that contest placement, I began the very, very long process of trying to find a publisher for it. Novellas are a very difficult size of manuscript to get published, I soon discovered. 25,000 words was too long for most science fiction magazines, and it's too short to interest a traditional book publisher. After considerable research, though, I found a variety of print magazine, ezine, anthology, and traditional and electronic book publishers whose submittal guidelines matched the novella's genre and length. Almost all of them forbade simultaneous submissions, so that meant submitting to one publisher at a time and waiting months to hear from each one.
The rejections started piling up, then in 2006 an electronic publisher accepted the manuscript and said a contract would be on the way. I waited, and waited, and the contract never came. I sent emails and got no response. I called the editor, who said they'd get back to me, twice. Nothing. Finally I had to give up on that publisher and start submitting again. That publisher is still in business, so I don't know what happened to my manuscript. Maybe they changed their minds and decided not to publish The Epsilon Eridani Alternative, but I wish they'd come right out and told me. Anyway, after finally amassing nineteen rejections (yes, that acceptance became a rejection in my list), Virtual Tales accepted the manuscript and sent a contract, which I signed at the end of August.
After five long years, I will finally see The Epsilon Eridani Alternative published. I'm very excited and looking forward to working with the editor and other staff at Virtual Tales. Here's their website: http://virtualtales.com/ for anyone else who might consider submitting to them.