I haven’t mentioned it before, but my publisher and I had a parting of the ways several weeks ago. Although I was disturbed by one facet of the breech, I thought ithe literary divorce was amicable. Apparently, not everyone in the publishing house felt the same way. I got some terse and downright snippy responses to emails dealing with details of the termination .
I wasn’t a good fit for the firm, and I recognized that early on. They, on the other hand, knew right off the bat that I’m lousy at selling myself and my products. Did that make the ending inevitable? Perhaps so, but the lbreakup left me with no way to access copies of The Zozobra Incident and The Bisti Business, much less having the long-promised The City of Rocks ever see the light of day. Woe is me. Alas and alack!
Another Albuquerque author, a friend who occasionally does guest posts for me, recently contracted a book to DreamSpinner Press and suggested I give them a try. Although it is early in the publishing game for him, he really sang praises for the attention the publisher has given him in the short time he’s been working with them.
After some sober reflection, I decided to give them a try. I know it is difficult – if not impossible – to get to get one publisher to pick up a book previously brought out by another house, but perhaps DreamSpinner would be interested in Rocks. If so, I would at least be able to continue the BJ Vinson mystery series. That meant, of course, I’d need to look into self-publishing to preserve the first two books.
My friend provided me with a contact at DreamSpinner, so I queried her at to the possibility they would publish Rocks. She responded by email that this looked interesting to her, but that she was leaving for a vacation and would not return until toward the end of October. Would I be able to wait until then? Of course, I would. Now an expression of interest … or even an invitation to submit a manuscript is a long way from getting something published. Furthermore, I might never hear from the lady again after she returned to work.
As the end of the month neared, I fretted over contacting her again, but I have returned from vacations during my working days to find myself swamped with work. So I decided to wait.
Lo and behold, before October was out, I got an email saying she was back and ready to proceed if I was. I was. So I sent a reply giving more details on the three books and the series I was weaving about this gay, macho, ex-Marine, ex-policeman confidential investigator in Albuquerque. Then I provided some details on my former publisher and gave what I hoped was a fair and measured opinion of our broken relationship.
Then I settled down to wait. But not for long. The next day, asked me to submit. Then she followed that request with twelve perfectly wonderful words: “But I won’t be interested unless I can have all three books.” Then she asked if I had evidence the rights to the published books had reverted to me.
Would you care to guess how long it took me to forward that information?
******
That post was probably more interesting to me than to any reader, so thanks once again for indulging me. Please remember, I’m always happy to hear from readers.
Thanks,
Don
New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment