Category: submissions

The one about simultaneous submissions

After the recent news that my book, Rock Zombie, lost its publisher (due to the publisher ceasing to exist and annoyingly not rising from the dead in a blaze of ironic glory) I am back submitting. Any writer will tell you that this is far from a fun process. It isn’t just the hard work of getting your synopsis, cover letter, bio, comparable titles, elevator pitch, and, you know, novel itself polished and ready, it’s the anticipation… the hope… the f*cking never-bloody-ending wait for a response! It takes a toll. Not to mention of course how utterly bizarre it is to have people read your work in the first place.

Everyone, please read my stories! Except, sort of don’t. It’s weird.

Writers

What you might not know if you haven’t put yourself through this particular wringer, is the added little addendum many publishers have in which they stipulate they will not accept ‘simultaneous submissions’. This means that if you submit your work to them you are doing so in the understanding that you are submitting only to them.

I guess I understand the reasoning; that if a publishing house goes through all the trouble of reading your work, liking it, debating it, deciding to publish it and then putting together an offer only to be told you’ve gone elsewhere, that could piss people off. But, honestly, it strikes me more like that one girl in high school who kept you on the line just enough to offer a glimmer of hope in a boob-filled future only for you to find out years later you never really stood a chance in the first place because some b-list celebrity came along and wrote a kids book/had a car with a CD player.

I might be mixing my metaphors here.

I think I have some issues.

Well, that is true… which is why I never submit to publishers who stipulate no simultaneous submissions. I received a form rejection recently that was for a book I submitted so long ago I actually forgot which one it was. I had to go back through my spreadsheet to find out. Sixteen months it took to get a response! Sixteen! Can you imagine waiting sixteen months on one submission and then going again?! Nightmare. And there are so many publishers you never hear from at all. That’s fair, that’s the game, but one at a time can go for burton.

However!

And it’s a big however entirely deserving of the line break, centre-justification, and bold text… when I created a list of potential new publishers for Rock Zombie there was one that rose above the others, and though they didn’t stipulate no simultaneous submissions, they did mention they have a 21 day turnaround. Twenty-one days is far more manageable than sixteen months, and I really like them, so this one time only I submitted to just the one place. And now we’re on the twenty-first day (not accounting for time difference) and I haven’t heard anything, so I’m experiencing a little microcosm of the whole process. It’s lovely, I tells you! Just lovely! Gotta dig that hope!

Ah, what am I complaining about? I know the drill, I’m an old-hand at this now. I’ll be a little disheartened if I hear nothing at all, that’s true, but then I’ll just get on with it. Roll the dice again.

I love Rock Zombie. I think people will get a real kick out of it, and the honest truth is, I really want to submit it to the amazing publisher of The Book and the Blade, but as Parliament House Press have signed four of my books already and I submitted a fifth a few months ago, I think I might be pushing it! 😀

So, if the phone doesn’t ring tomorrow, I have a top ten list of contacts I’ll be sending Rock Zombie off to later in the week… but this time I’ll be sending them all together… because sod no simultaneous submissions.

And clearly, the fact that this is the second blog post in as many days means I’m totally not dwelling on it at all. No, not even a little bit.

Cheers!

Whoring myself out to publishers…

The wonderful thing about being a writer is the joy you get from putting your heart and soul into a piece of work, spending hours, days, weeks, years poring over it, making it as amazing as possible, as perfect as possible, getting it polished and ready to hand out to the world and then giving it to complete strangers and waiting a small eternity for them to send you a form letter saying “ha ha ha! this is shit!” or, better yet, never hearing from them again.

Mmm, makes you feel all warm and cosy.

Clearly, I’m being facetious. Sending your books out is a bloody nightmare! It is especially worse for slightly introverted people (and let’s be honest, many authors are as their entire job is to close themselves away from people and make shit up in a dark room) because the last thing we want is for anyone to actually read it, but of course, we also want everyone to read it!

To paraphrase Hemmingway…

Writing is easy. You just sit at a computer and bleed.

Submitting to a publisher is easier… you just stand naked in front of people and wait for them to judge you. (And let me tell you, size is definitely an issue!)

When I first started sending books out I basically whored myself with very little in the way of research. There was definitely an arrogance there on my part. I’ve put all this work in, it must be good enough. It wasn’t. Oh, and I aimed big. Who publishes Neil Gaiman’s books? Terry Pratchett’s? They’ll do for me! It’s almost impossible to get yourself through the door of one of the big five without an invite (that’s the reason, honest!) so I threw my book to every small publisher I could find. I got instant answers… and that felt so good… but they all gushed over the opportunity they were giving me to pay them a shit ton of money. Eventually, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I did my research and it worked out well for the Arthur stories, but here we go again. Time to send some books out and see what happens.

I’ve done my research. I have a list (hell, I have a spreadsheet) and I know all the rules, but it’s a massive ball ache. Writing books is hard… summarising everything within your book in 500 hundreds words or less while trying to keep some of the magic and mystery alive… is a bloody nightmare! And some publishers get really cranky if you send it to more than one at a time, but here’s the thing with that, waiting 6 months to get a rejection letter means you can drag out the process for years! That’s one rule I frequently break. When I send books out, I send them out in droves! Another rule the great Conn Iggulden has suggested people take with a pinch of salt is the one asking for the first three chapters only. He reckons just send the whole lot in because if they like it they have it right there ready and waiting. But, to be fair, who is going to reject a Conn Iggulden book these days? The guy is a legend, churning out bestseller after bestseller.

So, I’ll be breaking a few rules this weekend and no doubt having a few beverages in the evening to drown my sorrows. There’s nothing quite like that post-click send glow when you realise you’ve addressed it to the wrong person, or you spelled something incorrectly, or you get it into your head that they should have already read it and sent you a six-book deal within half-an-hour of receiving the email.

And of course, instead of actually sending out submissions I’m writing this, but now we’re at the end…

Wish me luck!