Blog No 2

Back to 1992 …

I took the advice of the lady in the publishing house in New York and got hold of a copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, although I didn’t go to the library for it, I bought a copy. And, boy, was that money well spent! This publication is an Aladdin’s Cave of information. In my opinion, it’s a MUST HAVE for writers, wherever they happen to be.

I found the section on literary agents and ye Gods and little fishes!, how many of ‘em are there? They seemed to be everywhere. It was a minefield. Who was I going to choose? Figuring that since most of the major publishers seemed to be in New York and that New York agents were likely to know them better than out-of-town or out-of-state agents, I decided to approach New York agents. Even so, it was hard to decide because there were so many of them.

They all made one thing clear, don’t submit to more than one agent at a time. I chose one whose entry in the Yearbook stated that they were actively encouraging new writers, and I followed their instructions to the letter, sending them a bio/covering letter, one-page synopsis and the first three chapters. Brimming with hope, I sent it off. Thirty days later, I got a reply. I tore open the envelope with trembling fingers and a surging heart to have my hope dashed at the sight of my very first rejection letter. Undeterred, I stapled it to the letter I had sent them, filed it, and selected another agent.

Several months and – joy of joys - several rejections later, I got a reply from Alex Kamaroff and Associates, which got my juices going. They were saying they liked what they had read and wanted me to send the manuscript, plus a reading fee of $100. I had no problem with the reading fee, since many of the American agents were charging a $100 reading fee at the time. They said that if they liked the manuscript, they would send me a writer/agent contract. Now I was getting somewhere. John Grisham had just had his second book published, and I figured that if he could do it, so could I. So watch out, Mr. Grisham. Duh!

Thirty days later, I got a letter from Alex Kamaroff informing me that my manuscript contained too may issues for their small company to handle, and suggesting I send my work to an editorial company.

Back to the Yearbook. The editorial section this time.

More on the saga in next Monday’s blog.

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Oh, by the way, some of my Twitter followers may feel that all we at booksthepublishersmissed.com are doing is promoting my own books. In fact, nothing is further from the truth and this seems like a good time to set things straight.

This venture was created to give unpublished authors who had spent years practising their craft – as I have – the opportunity to have their books marketed on the internet in ebook format. The idea was to kick off with four of my books and take on other unpublished writers when my books started to sell. Well, it’s a bit like Thomas Edison finding 2,000 ways of a light bulb not working, before he found a way that it would work. We kicked off in March 2012 and have so far discovered what won’t sell books, and far be in from me to take on other authors only to let them down. There are enough disappointments in the writing business without me adding to them. Not everyone agrees with me. Some say we need more books on the site.

I pulled two editorial documents from the site when I realised it was going to take longer than expected, and that’s why our website looks bland and uninspiring at the moment, although from a functionality standpoint it works just fine. Steps are afoot to do something about this, and these steps – if things work according to plan – will take us into a different league. More on this as and when.

I had thought to post our Mission Statement – one of the documents I pulled from the site – on this blog, but this blog would then have become too lengthy. So I shall post our Mission Statement on next Monday’s blog. Then, more of what’s behind booksthepublishersmissed.com will be revealed.

In the meantime, keep the faith.