My Descent into Publishing Purgatory:
Part 5—Waking up from the Dream

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By the end of the year, I grew more dissatisfied with my situation. My “publisher” was keeping me bogged down in the marketing where I had no skills and no experience. They thrust me into a senior-level job as a marketing and social media specialist with expectations to produce spectacular results after sixteen weeks of on-the-job training and being paired with a “mentor.”

My manuscript never got near an editor’s desk.

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I read the articles on SFWA’s Writer Beware blog and corresponded by email with Victoria Strauss herself. I discussed my frustrations with close friends—a freelance professional editor and a couple of authors with publishing credits at the major houses like Harper-Collins and DAW.  Their support and friendship validated what I knew in my gut to be true. I was in a bad situation.

  • A-to-Z Publishing demanded that I work as hard to market myself as if I were a self-published author. Yet they denied me all control over the launch schedule, the choice of editor, and the cover design—contrary to my expectations of a boutique small press.
  • Their brand label had no commitment to quality. The books they produced ahead of mine showed sloppy editing riddled with grammatical errors. They used what were clearly cut-and-paste stock images on their cover art.
  • Their projected sales goals aspired to those of major commercial publishers, but A-to-Z lacked the capital to build a platform to help me achieve those goals.
  • They would never contact any reviewers or bloggers on my behalf nor did they establish any relationships with such as contacts for their authors. Instead, I would be in line with countless self-pubbed authors begging to bloggers for attention. Forget about a review in Publisher’s Weekly or Locus or being featured in the books section of my Sunday newspaper.
  • A-to-Z would never get me distributed into any brick-and-mortar bookstore, even the small independent ones. In fact, they discouraged me from arranging any personal appearances in a bookstore on the premise that bookstores were “boring” relics headed for the dust bin of history. Perhaps it’s different in other parts of the country, but where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, bookstores are not dead!

What advantages did they really offer to be earning a hefty cut of my profits? None.

Even so, it was very hard to let go of my dream. Like the workhorse in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I kept trying harder and harder. Believe me, none of the authors in A-to-Z’s catalog put in more hours and more effort with so little results. Or, as the marketing folks say, ROI—return on investment. I studied Guy Kawasaki’s marketing books. I watched YouTube videos. I read a bunch of blogs. I learned about SEOs, Google analytics, the algorithms that Facebook uses to filter the news feed, the difference between outbound (spam) and inbound marketing, and the application of psychology techniques in advertising. Overthinking it? Perhaps. I realized that sales and marketing folks think about these things a lot. They get really excited to blog about metrics, clicks and sticky views, conversions from leads, tracking sales spikes correlated to their activity on social media, and so on. God bless ’em, but this stuff bores me.

Ironically, one of the lessons in A-to-Z’s seminar had us take a look at what other successful authors do and analyze how they got there. George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones) started as a script writer in Hollywood over thirty years ago and has worked his way up the food chain. Brandon Sanderson is an up-and-coming fantasy author with a background in missionary work. In other words, he knows how to knock on doors and talk to people. Aha! Light bulb moment. Like any professional career, successful authors put time and effort into networking in their field. Clearly, it takes years of diligent effort and marketing savvy to build up a fan base. There are no shortcuts, no magic wand, no fast track to success.

I asked to be released from my contract. At first, they said no. “We have been honoring our side of the contract, and I cannot release the book to you after investing this much in you.” My mother’s fighting spirit flared to life in my gut. I pushed back, citing that the contract obligated A-to-Z to publish my book within eighteen months of receiving the complete manuscript. That deadline had passed. They stonewalled me until I threatened legal action. Thankfully, I never had to go to court—but I was ready to fight.

I’m fortunate that, with some perseverance, I recovered all the rights to my manuscript.  I am free to self-publish or send out queries once more. Back to square one. Except that I no longer feel so desperate and hopeless that I’ll sign anything just for the chance of seeing my name in print. If I grow old and die without ever seeing a novel commercially published in a SFWA qualifying market, I am okay with that. Now I have the confidence to walk away from a bad deal, and thanks to this experience, I’ve learned how to spot one.


So what’s a poor struggling first-time author to do?  Arm yourself!  You spent a long time writing your book, so spend a little extra researching where to find a good home for it. Here are some places to start.

The Peril of Author Mills: Victoria Strauss discusses the siren allure of the author mills that lure in inexperienced first time writers and reveals the nightmare they can become.

The Writer’s Dig:  Editor Robert Lee Brewer of the Writer’s Digest discusses the small press as a publishing option.  

Writer Beware—Contests and Awards:  SFWA blog discussing the pros and cons of contests and awards.

Writer Beware—Small Presses: SFWA blog discussing issues to consider when submitting to a small press.

My Descent into Publishing Purgatory:
Part 4—Goodbye Professor Higgins

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DeeDee discovers a new Form of Torture
(click picture to read)

Meanwhile, I worked harder at coming out of my shell. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. I attended local SF/F conventions and set a goal for myself—not just to attend panels but to raise my hand out of the audience and make a comment. I gave myself permission to say dumb things or just agree with what someone else said. It was too soon for Eliza Doolittle to become My Fair Lady and command the attention of the entire room with eloquence. My goal was to just… speak.

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More good things happened. I got a short story accepted by a magazine! Okay, it’s a very small e-zine that is not a SFWA qualifying market. Even so, it was a “yes” after so many years of rejection. Since then, I have sold 2 more stories and another will be appearing in an upcoming anthology. At last, I am building a list of publishing credits to put in query letters. My fan fiction is not the only thing to put on my resume!

A-to-Z Publishing disregarded my personal leaps and my incredible forward strides to reinvent myself. I felt sure my awesome book would be a sleeper hit but they were not willing to take a chance. All they wanted was numbers… numbers… In other words, if I could not guarantee big sales right out of the gate, they would never start work on editing. More than a year after I submitted the manuscript, no one had ever read beyond the synopsis.

Also, as part of my so-called prize package, I was entitled to write blog posts on A-to-Z Publishing’s Web site for a full year, The president and I agreed on a list of topics. I wrote half of them with a promise to write more. She heartily approved, “These are wonderful, informative blogs! I know I am going to enjoy your book.”  Yet to my surprise, she refused to post the blogs until after my book’s launch. “No author has had their blogging start prior to their book release.” I never got a clear explanation of why she would hold back doing something so simple to give me more visibility. If my book’s release was delayed because of my low numbers, why not boost me up?

A phone call with the president of A-to-Z only increased my frustrations. She scolded me for thirty minutes about the lack of friends listed on my Facebook page. Seriously, I took notes and marked the time. At the end of that call, my action items were: 

  • to work harder to build up my social media numbers
  • to fill out her newly designed self-assessment and time management worksheet

Yeah, that was it; my publisher’s solution to get my book published was to make me work harder on extraneous stuff and fill out forms.


Part 5: Waking up from the Dream

My Descent into Publishing Purgatory:
Part 3—I Suck at Marketing

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Graphic from MediaLabs

How do I describe the year-and-a-half that followed my signing a contract with A-to-Z Publishing? One word:  NUMBERS.

  • 16 weeks of their online marketing seminar
  • 12 hours on the phone with my personal author-success coach
  • Less than 100 Facebook friends
  • Not even 500 Twitter followers
  • Zero interest in Pinterest

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I gained a new respect for people with savvy marketing skills. I discovered it’s more than just being tenacious and chatty like my mother going door-to-door collecting donations for the American Heart Association. There are highly-crafted techniques of creating awareness, engaging a broad audience, holding their attention, and converting interest into sales. Marketing is as much a craft as writing a good novel. Some of the skills can be taught, but much of it comes from personality and a certain frame-of-mind when interacting with the world.

My personal author-success coach at A-to-Z Publishing often remarked on how so many writers hate marketing. Very true. We would rather sit alone in a dark room in our fuzzy slippers and pajamas and quietly peck at a keyboard all day. Again, true. Her tough love approach is to suck it up, put your shoes on, and get out there!

I spent hours and hours on the phone with my author-success coach as part of my grand prize winner package. Let’s just say I did not enjoy the experience. She dredged up a lot of personal baggage that I had worked for years to suppress. Instead of being inspired or motivated, I felt the same as flunking eighth-grade algebra. My NUMBERS were not increasing for all the hours I spent on social media every day. I was told to stop over-thinking and just do it! The message that I kept hearing was, be popular! Say snappy things on Twitter to make thousands of people want to follow you! Spend a few minutes every day on Facebook groups, Google+, Yahoo Groups, and be strategically witty so thousands of people will notice you! Don’t be so shy about clicking that add friend button! Numbers… Numbers… The pressure to build up my list of excited fans was relentless. I cried at night. I had stomach aches. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to check my Facebook page.

At age 53, I was flashing back to being a nerdy outsider in high school. Sports were especially miserable as I couldn’t catch, couldn’t throw, couldn’t run, couldn’t kick, couldn’t balance. You know that song about, those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball? When they called my name, everyone groaned.

Both the author-success coach and the president of A-to-Z Publishing explained that my book’s launch date would be delayed because of my low social media numbers. “Schedules for editing and release dates HINGE STRONGLY on your social networking and blog numbers. It hinges on your activity within your book and author platforms, and on the marketing and publicity activities you create along the way. Those social networking numbers are the numbers that can assure a good launch.”  They pushed—hard—for me to build up a list of thousands of engaged followers. Yes, thousands! Tens of thousands! They sent out weekly emails reminding all their authors of a 20:1 ratio, that “in order to sell 1,000 books, you need 20,000 engaged people across Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo! Groups, Facebook Groups, Blog followers, Unique Hook Bloggers, and Pinterest combined. Where are your numbers right now?” I got scolded for the lameness of my social media presence more often than the dentist reminds me to floss.

My book and I got benched. One by one, the books of my “classmates” got launched into the world. I saw their excited announcements online, their smiling faces at book signing parties, and I wanted so badly for my turn to come. As hard as I tried to be happy for them—as I would want someone to be happy for me—I couldn’t stop the pangs of jealousy in my gut. This hurt worse than a one-line rejection notice. Everyone else went ahead of me. I was the grand prize winner, and I was shoved to the back of the line.


Part 4: Goodbye Professor Higgins

My Descent into Publishing Purgatory:
Part 2—Winning the Contest

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I was in a vulnerable head space when I submitted my manuscript to an epic fantasy novel contest that I discovered online. Okay, I knew it was not a prestigious annual contest like L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future or the Amazon Breakthrough Novel award. (I’ve been rejected from them, too!)

This publisher was an unknown name, a start-up looking to establish itself in the rapidly changing landscape of e-books and print-on-demand. For anonymity’s sake, let’s call them A-to-Z Publishing.

I sent in my well-bruised query package one more time. What a relief! Not only was my novel accepted but they LOVED it!!

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Dear Denise,

I am writing to inform you that [title] is definitely a finalist in the Epic Fantasy contest. Contest winners will be announced on [date].

We are especially thrilled to write today to inform you that we are offering you a publishing contract with [A-to-Z Publishing] for [title], even before the contest has closed. We love the story, your writing and the characters.

We are excited to work with you and see your author career grow!

What attracted me to A-to-Z Publishing was their unique program of author-marketing seminars. They require all of their authors to undergo this training in promotion, publicity, and social media. They call it their commitment to success.

Writers hear this all the time. “You have to promote yourself! Even the big publishers don’t do anything for you unless you’re J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin!” It adds an extra layer of hopelessness on top of the despair, that even if you are lucky enough to be chosen from the slush pile, your book will never sell unless you hit the bricks to get your face out there.

My handicap is that I have zero marketing experience. I’m the little Girl Scout who only made a sale when her parents bought a box of cookies. As a bookworm nerd (a.k.a. introvert), I chose careers in secretarial jobs and word processing. Now I am a paralegal in immigration law where I concentrate on  government application forms. I have avoided careers that required customer-facing or public speaking skills. I thrive in jobs that require sitting quietly at a keyboard. Promoting myself would involve a huge mental leap and a transformation of my self-image. Just as I took courses to become a paralegal, I expected that marketing was a skill set that I could master if I worked hard enough. I was seeking a mentor, and I thought I had found one.

Regret Number One:  I should have had a publishing lawyer review the contract before I signed. Many of the clauses are not in my best interest. For example, A-to-Z got the rights not only to this book but to all future books in this series. They had right of first refusal on everything I would ever write for the rest of my life. They would own foreign translation rights, audio books, and movie or t.v. adaptions—as if a small e-book press could ever pitch this book to Hollywood? I guess they were hoping to discover the next Fifty Shades of Gray. The contract’s terms were life-of-copyright with no expiration date. Royalties would be calculated from “net” profits and not from the “list” or retail price of each book. It had all the classic traits of a boilerplate contract from a vanity press. But I had never seen a publisher’s contract in my life so I didn’t know better.

Frankly, at that moment, I did not care about being smart or well-informed. I was flattered and excited to be named the grand prize winner. I wanted to be published so badly that I would have signed anything they put in front of me.


Part 3: I Suck at Marketing

My Descent into Publishing Purgatory: Pitfalls of My Novel Contract

Part One: The Dream of an Acceptance Letter

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“At least they returned your novel with a personal rejection letter.”kevinspear.com

I am happy to be not published.  Yes, you read that right: not. This is a difficult story to tell. It must sound crazy that I wanted to get out of a signed publishing contract. Isn’t that a struggling writer’s dream come true? Yet, today I am thrilled to hold a termination and rights-reversion letter in my hands.

A year ago, I would have felt differently: I did feel differently.

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I used to be desperate. It’s embarrassing to admit how long—and how badly—I have carried the burden of this dream. Turning fifty was painful because I had always imagined being on the other side of a successful author career by now. In my youth, I envisioned myself as an adult wearing dark turtleneck sweaters at bookstore signings and enjoying my well-earned fame.

My first self-publishing efforts in seventh grade used my dad’s electric typewriter and hand-drawn covers. A simple peasant girl discovers she belongs to a race of magical beings living secretly among us.  A female Tarzan dwells on a mystical island inhabited by space aliens and eloquent great apes. The margins of my school notebooks were full of amazing creatures and swashbuckling cavaliers.

In college, I majored in English lit and creative writing. My teachers praised my space operas and vampire stories, but I was rejected by the campus literary journal. Now I understand that they were probably looking for mainstream poetic literature, not SF/F genre, but at the time I took it personally.

Life happened. I got married. I worked a series of office jobs. I raised two daughters. I took night courses to become a paralegal. Somehow I squeezed in time to keep writing. I joined critique groups and workshops where I’ve met some of my dearest friends. In the days before email, I spent a fortune on postage and photocopies.  There’s an expression among us writers, that you can paper the walls with your rejection slips. Well, I need bigger walls!

I turned 30…then 40…then 45… The unfulfilled dream got heavier as the years went on. Going the self-publishing route was no better. I tossed a book up on Amazon in 2009 and, to date, it has netted a handful of sales. It weighed upon my soul, the longing to hear “yes” from a publisher. Instead I heard this:

  • After thoughtful consideration, however, we have concluded that unfortunately it didn’t work for us, so we’ll have to say no.
  • Unfortunately, we do not feel this piece is right for us at this time. We do wish you all the best.
  • I’m afraid it’s not quite right for us, but wish you the best of luck in your pursuit of publication.
  • Unfortunately, [title] is not quite right for us. I wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.
  • Unfortunately, it does not meet our needs at this time.
  • Unfortunately, it does not meet our needs at this time.
  • Unfortunately, it does not meet our needs at this time.

Part 2: Winning the Contest