Trying to get a book published is a long, hard, horrible road to travel.
If your drive to get published is deep-rooted and sincere, I don't wish to scare you off -- and I probably won't. But let me tell you that this thing can eat you alive and make you miserable.
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Dickens said it best in "Little Dorrit:"
"At least, I'll try," said Clennam. "It will do me no harm to try."
"I am not certain of that," rejoined Doyce, laying his hand persuasively on his shoulder. "It has done me harm, my friend. It has aged me, tired me, vexed me, disappointed me. It does no man any good to have his patience worn out, and to think himself ill- used."
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True, Dickens was talking about something else, but those words ring true for me and my trying-to-get-a-book-published experience.
It all started so easily, then my hopes were aroused by a very favorable response.
Success seemed within my grasp.
Surely I would hear today.
Better check my e-mail again.
Is the mail here yet?
Maybe he's emailed while I was checking the mail.
I wonder if there's a phone message?
Day after day after week after month. And in the end -- about 8 months later - nothing came of it. Nothing.
Life is too good to spend your time like that. It took two years and four-and-a-half books to go from my first naive query letter to finally getting an offer. And I checked my e-mail way too many times on way too many days.
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Perhaps the best advice I can give -- and it will be hard to follow -- is to send off your query letters and try to forget them.
Find another project, write another book, do anything other than check the mailbox.
Just yesterday I received a rejection letter -- a form letter -- to a query I think had been mailed one year earlier. Some just never come back at all.
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Alright, all that being said, here's some advice for you if you decide to do it:
1) The only reason to do this is if you really, really feel the need to write the book. Don't write it to try to make money or get famous or be clever.
I've got a stack of unpublished manuscripts. If I had written them only to get them published then I wasted a heck of a lot of my time. But if you get something out of the writing for the writing's sake, then keep going.
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2) I have come to believe that editors reject books for two reasons. Reason one: the book isn't good. Reason two: the book isn't the right kind of book.
This means that your book can be good, but it won't get published.
So my suggestion is to write more than one book and to make each one different.
My first book, Horton Halfpott, is a silly English mansion mystery. I love that book, but it's a good thing I started writing Qwikpick -- a wholly different sort of book -- while I was waiting around, because I'm still waiting for someone to say yes to Horton.
So, diversify.
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3) Try to get an agent.
My agent is #1 super-awesome. Once she agreed to take on Qwikpick, she sold it in a flash. Would I have sold it anyway? No, I don't think so. Without her I would simply not have made it. Look in the Writer's Market book to find a list of agents.
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There you have it. It's not a lot of fun. But writing is. And to write with no thought of ever getting it out there would be impossible. So, that's why you have to travel this hard road ... Alas!
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Please feel free to write to me if you're going through this process. I don't know if I can help, but I can definitely sympathize. (Use the CONTACT SAM link at left.)