Celebrating the ‘Nice’ Rejection By Robin Weaver

 This is a Blast from the Past post Robin Weaver wrote twelve years ago. Does it still resonate today? ~ Sarah

 – May 2, 2012

At long last, the response from the editor/agent arrives. We click on the email (or tear open the envelope). As writers, our emotions are split—equal parts of fear and anticipation. Okay, maybe 70/30.

In a mere second, the two-part emotion morphs into 100% disappointment. We groan. Another rejection. “…Thank you for your submission…blah, blah, blah…but we don’t want your stinking stuff.”

Okay, so maybe the quote above isn’t verbatim, but if you’ve been writing for any length of time, you become adept at reading between the RTF text. They don’t want our stuff—stinking or not. So our fingers crimp the mouse, clicking on the delete button with enough force to hammer a nail into a cement block.

But wait. What was that?

No. Not possible. Yet our subconscious insists. Beneath that form text, we saw something just before the generic signature block. In script font.

Believing we’re wasting time, we nevertheless click on the trash folder. We gulp another mouthful of coffee, convinced caffeine will rectify our inability to correctly process a cookie-cutter rejection. We search through the day’s discarded mail until we find the zapped electronic communication. Again. Thinking we’re bat-dung crazy, we double-click.

Holy Mother of Adverbs! The script flashes like a neon sign. We aren’t delusional. At the end of the blah, blah, blah, there really is an addition comment. In a font of a different color we see actual feedback. “Please send me something else.” (Or “…your characters have real promise; you have an engaging voice; an interesting premise...”)

We do a little dance, make a little laugh and start to get down (to work) when we realize something amazing has occurred. We’ve transitioned. Our psyche didn’t experience a bone-crunching deflation. Instead, we enjoy the thrill of a polite “no thank-you.” Okay, maybe pathetic is a more apt description than amazing, but we’ve stopped taking rejection personally.

What is wrong with us?

I can’t imagine any other occupation where people get ecstatic over so little. For those of us who still have a day job, the nice rejection is equivalent to hearing, “No, you can’t have a raise, but we’ll use colored paper to print your pay stub.” In the White Collar world, can you imagine interviewing an applicant and then sending a letter saying:

• You’re fully qualified for the advertised position but your coffee cup didn’t wow us.
• We know you can do this job, but your pacing will wear a hole in our carpets.
• We feel you are right for the position but fear you don’t have enough conflict in your life.
• Thank you for applying but we’re not accepting people who wear blue suits at this time.
• Your qualifications are amazing but we don’t believe your car will fit in our parking spaces.

Worse, can you imagine the fabled applicant being giddy because we add: “But please apply again in ten years.”

Perhaps the difference for the writer is one of magnitude. As authors, we don’t just get a job. We go from the wilderness of the unpublished into the wonderful, wonderful world of PUBBED.

Or maybe we’re just nuts.

What do you think? Are we crazy, or is there a method to the mayhem?

Copyright © 2012 by Robin Weaver

 

Questions re: Traditional Publishing vs Self-publishing

 

I belong to a number of online groups for writers. I enjoy people telling what the writing life means to them. But over the last few months, the comments have become variations on the same theme. A question like - I've just finished my first book, should I go for traditional publishing, or should I self publish?

I know what it means to be a beginner, and I have tried to provide answers in some cases. Unfortunatly, I sadly admit that I can be long-winded. Furthermore, my kind of answer, especially in the limitations of a twitter or facebook setting, probably ends up being more confusing than helpful. But the questioners keep showing up, many of them asking the same things. So I have decided to try giving my insights and responses to the questions of beginning writers here on this blog.

There are many important things a new author needs to consider when they first begin writing. 

First: You need time, money and, most of all patience 

In some ways, publishing can be analagous to remodeling a home. Some people and projects require the use of a general contractor to take charge.  Other people feel competent put in the time and energy to manage the details themselves, and need the control of engaging individual workers and making certain get exactly what they want. Your personality plays the biggest role in selecting which path you will do best in as far as publishing your manuscript.  

In modern traditional publishing, patience is not only a virtue, it’s an absolute necessity. Years can pass between the time you write THE END and when an acquiring editor agrees to buy the rights to publish your book.  Conversely, you may only need months to do it yourself and self-publish. The self-publishing path will cost you in money more than in time. 

Second: Your individual goals drive the decision

When you first start writing a manuscript, decide if your future plans include publication.  The sooner you make that decision, the sooner you can start looking into things like editing. Not everyone wants to publish. That’s absolutely OK. A member of my critique group is a fantastic writer, with zero desire to publish. Not even in a magazine. I love her writing, and a few years ago I tried to get her to consider publishing. No interest. Her goal is to have something that tells her history to her family when she is gone.
If you want to publish someday, start making decisions before you write THE END. If you are looking at traditional publishing, you can get an early start on researching agents and acquiring editors who are willing to take unagented submissions. If you decide to self-publish and want more than the pride of holding your book in your hands, and maybe seeing copies in the hands of your friends and family, the sooner you stargt learning more a out the realities of publishing the better. If you want to sell thousands of copies and eearn best-seller status while making a pile of money, start moving in that direction as soon as possible.

This includes an honest self-assessment on your comfort with marketing. While it is true that you have to market yourself and your book whether you pursue traditional or self-publishing, marketing is critical to any hope of making significant sales for a self-published book. People prefer buying books from authors they know, or at least feel they know. Celebrities, best-selling authors, authors with a major platform. That’s why you should begin your marketing work even before you finish your book.  

While many self published romance books and authors beat these numbers, the average self-published book sells 250 copies. The average self-published author earns $1,000 per year from their books. 33% of self-published authors make less than $500 per year. 90% of self-published books sell less than 100 copies.

Marketing yourself is crucial to helping you surpass those numbers. Use social media, your website, and any other means you have to build a group that will follow you. Over time, they will feel like they grow to know you, they will feel you are one of them. Then, months, even years later, when you have a completed book, you also have people who feel they know you and are therefore more likely to care about your book.

Third: Know your own personality

Are you ready to face rejection without feeling compleely dejected. Here are a few statistics accumulated a few years ago. 

Agents and acquiring editors reject around 90% of submissions. If you don’t accumulate a large number of rejections in your quest for traditional publication, you have either given up on getting an agent or being acquired by a traditional publisher - or you have the goddess Tyche in your corner (Greek goddess of fortune, chance,  and fate, much like the African goddess Oya who appears in my newest (and as yet unpublished) manuscript). In order to achieve you must be prepared to see a lot of nos first.

I hope I have managed to answer some issues aspiring authors may have, without making things more confusing. I would love to have you share any issues or alternate opinions in the comments. I too am eagefr to learn. For the record, I have traditionally published three books, and self-published two, so I have seen both worlds.   

Overheard on . . . Romancing the Genres

“I didn’t get in to Hedgebrook.”

The kindly written rejection email reminded me of the many I have received querying agents and editors. Ah…. The joy of being a new, unknown, author. The thrill of finishing that first manuscript is quickly replaced with the utter despondence of getting rejection after rejection.

Very soon we begin to wonder why we ever thought we could write, whether it is even worth it, what our back-up plan should be. Our self-esteem plummets and our freezer is emptied of any form of chocolate ice cream (including the pint that was stuck in the back because the last time we looked it had ice on the surface.) This dear reader is the glamour that is writing for the great majority of your favorite authors.

But, people needn’t be a writer to understand what this feels like. Entire books are written about the college rejection letter. I know fellow graduate students who lined their bedroom walls with rejection letters from prospective companies. And we won’t even speak of the horrors of being rejected for prom.

Rejection is a great crocodile waiting to snap whenever we put ourselves out there. And still somehow we find the courage to leap.

This courage in each of us deserves a toast. So on New Year’s Eve this year I will raise my cup to each of you… author or student or athelete. I’ll especially raise it to the fantastic debut authors who will spotlighted here in January.

Like Brenna Aubrey, whose book, AT ANY PRICE, was just released. Or like Traci Andrighetti who wrote the fun escapade, LEMONCELLO YELLOW, and had me at Lemoncello.

We are all authors of some form, and as they said in my rejection from the writer in residence program, “Sending work into the world is an act of bravery…”

Indeed! So please come back in January to applaud the drive within each of these debut authors that had them hurdling the many obstacles, swallowing the many critiques, and sending their work out into the world so that you and I could enjoy it.
Best wishes for a courageous and outrageous 2013.

Deanne

www.deannewilsted.com
Journeys Inspired by Love

Without a Parachute

by Tam Linsey

I leaped out of the plane without making sure my parachute had been properly packed. There was a chance it would work. But there was a greater chance that the cord would break, or the fabric get stuck, or a myriad other things that can go wrong in a parachute jump. Luckily I didn't have far to fall.

That's an analogy to my first manuscript submission. I'd spent my senior year of college researching the novel, and began writing it as my Senior Thesis. It took me ten years to finish it. No one can take ten years to write a novel and expect to make a living at it.

Then I had loved ones read the one hundred and sixty thousand word tome and tell me it was wonderful. I felt great, basking in the adrenaline rush of my immanent success. I started calling myself a writer. I had no idea industry standards for first time authors tend to favor shorter manuscripts of around one hundred thousand words. Not to mention you should never say your mother loved it.

I'd gone over the finished product three times, which felt like plenty of revision. All I need is a beginning, middle and end, right? Not so. Stories have things like character arc, turning points, and subtext. Although I'd been an English major, I'd never heard these terms before. Granted, there are a few savant writers out there who can pull out a story without thinking of these things, but I found out the hard way - I'm not one of them.

Of course I got rejections.

The only thing I did right was go to my local library and research reputable agents for their addresses. (The Internet makes this so much easier these days!) But researching agents wasn't going to assure me my ill-packed parachute would open. And it didn't. I got 29 rejections before I paused and decided to look for a support group.

When I found my local RWA chapter, they pulled my chute out of the pack and taught me how to fold it properly, check the cords, verify the emergency release, and all the other little details. They were harsh. And they were right. They made me realize how unprepared I was. And when I was truly ready and properly terrified, I wouldn't jump.

So they pushed me out of the plane.

Guess what? My parachute opened.  I got personalized rejections (for you non-writers, believe it or not, this is a good thing.) I got full manuscript requests. I have not landed an agent, yet, but I know I will eventually hit the bull's-eye waiting for me below. Maybe even on my next leap.

© Tam Linsey, 2011. All rights reserved.