This Author Does NOT “Rush to Get Published”

 

Image credit: Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

 

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I never allow rejections to get me to stop writing. Just take a look at ALL of the book-length manuscripts, short stories, poems, essays and articles I have collecting dust and you will know that I’m the kind of writer who will keep writing no matter what!

 

Rejections? Market incompatibilities? Overdone topics? Feh. They don’t stop me! I will keep writing and submitting even if I can’t find a home for my poems, short stories, essays and articles.

 

The same is true for books. I started writing books as a teenager and I have been writing them ever since. In fact, one year I actually stopped to count how many books I had written so far, and was surprised to discover that there were nine of them.

 

I have books that are untyped. I have books waiting for me to remember they even exist. And I have several drafts of books that have gone through rewrites and revisions.

 

I am constantly writing, revising, and editing my books. Even if I don’t have a publisher for a book, I’m still working on fixing it up.

 

So when it comes to an opportunity to get a book published, you can bet that chances are good I will have something in my arsenal to submit.

 

This was the case with a publisher that eventually shut down. I sent her a bunch of book-length manuscripts that were ready to submit (five children’s books manuscripts among them). And she published three of those books in one year.

 

It was this particular thing that someone took notice of on social media and contacted me through email saying that I shouldn’t rush to get books published.

 

That particular email left me feeling puzzled. Why would someone see my post about having three books published in a year and automatically assume that I would rush to get a book published?

 

Because that is certainly NOT how I do things!

 

People who know me know that I tend to overthink things. I also tend to be paranoid. So of course I will occasionally revisit a manuscript I have written to revise, change, delete and sometimes even rewrite the whole thing again for some reason or another. As it is, I’m in the process of changing the genre of a YA novel I wrote. And another YA novel is getting a complete rewrite.

 

There is no rushing going on here.

 

When I feel that a book-length manuscript is ready to submit, then I will put it into my “books ready to submit” folder. But not before!

 

I didn’t respond to that person’s email, but only because they ended up touting their services about how they help authors get their manuscripts ready for publication. It was obviously spam. So, no thanks, I’ll pass.

 

I have my spidey sense telling me “this book I wrote needs work.”

 

I have my beta readers.

 

I have the MANY rounds of revision and edits that I put these manuscripts through.

 

I have editors editing my manuscripts.

 

And I have that other spidey sense that will let me know when a manuscript is ready.

 

No rushing to get a book published going on here. I’m all about quality, not quantity. As far as my books are concerned, I want to make sure that quality is there before I submit it for publication – or, in the case of self-publishing a book, start the process for self-publishing.

Read Submission Guidelines Carefully

There’s nothing quite like finding a market which you think you could write for. Or perhaps you have already written an article, and you think you have found just the right place to submit it.

 

But are you sure this is the right market for your work?

 

One way to find out is to read the submission guidelines – and read them carefully.

 

Most markets do post their submission guidelines online. These places understand that, nowadays, everybody is using the internet, especially writers. So they have created websites about their publications or special pages for their websites. Take some time to explore their site and look for their guidelines. They usually appear as “submission guidelines” or “writer’s guidelines.” Some sites even say “Write for us!” and you can usually find the guidelines here. Another way to find submission guidelines for markets is to check out the most recent edition of Writer's Market.

 

The submission guidelines will usually tell you everything you need to know about what exactly that market wants, and how you can submit to them. With one market I queried, I had to fill out a form. With another, they use Submittable for all submissions. So make sure you pay attention to the instructions on just HOW you submit to the market.

 

Another thing to pay attention to is their formatting guidelines. Some markets want to receive all submissions in 12-point Times New Roman (TNR) font, with double spaces. Others are a little more flexible with the formatting. Make sure you follow these formatting guidelines. Never expect a market to make an exception for you if you decide to submit something using 14-point Verdana font with single spacing. If you can’t respect them enough to follow their formatting guidelines, they won’t respect you enough to read your work. Most submissions that don’t follow the guidelines will be deleted unread.

 

Additionally, follow the word count limit. Don’t expect the editor to cut or edit the work to fit the word count limit; that is YOUR job. But if you can’t do this, ask a writer friend for help. Never ask the editor to edit your work so that it will fit their guidelines.

 

The other way to find out if a market is a good place to submit your work is to read what they have already published. Study the work they want and see if your work is a good match. If they only publish work on a specific topic, you’ll notice this by reading what they have already published. This is not only the kind of work they like but the kind of work they want. Most markets will post samples of what they have published online. Others may ask you to buy the most recent copy of their publication. Do what you can to read their most recently published work. This will help you decide if your work is a good fit there.

 

Many writers think that there’s a lot of wiggle room with submission guidelines. That if they send something via email when the editor prefers submissions through Submittable, that if their work is “just a little more” than the desired word count or that the editor will be so struck by the genius of their writing that they don’t care that it’s a health and beauty article when they publish articles about electronics, they still have a chance of getting published there. This is NOT true. Editors do not make such exceptions, especially for writers they are not familiar with.

 

Read the submission guidelines carefully. Follow the submission guidelines to a T. By being professional and putting your best effort forward with your queries, you just might make a great first impression and have a chance of getting an acceptance.

Dear book promotion sites: Please stop spamming authors

Recently, I started receiving emails that were obvious spam. “Obvious” because, in the subject lines, there was a title for either one of my or my daughter’s books and it came from someone I had either not contacted or did not know. It was one of those out of the blue emails.

As someone who has worked in marketing to promote authors, I understand the reasoning behind the subject line. Even so, it just wasn’t enough to grab my attention. It was enough to get the email deleted. Why?

I don’t do business with people who think it’s okay to spam others.

For some time now, I have networked with other authors, book publicists, marketing reps and book bloggers. I have spent some time communicating with them, getting to know them, and creating some kind of relationship with them to the point where they have earned my trust. These are people whose names I KNOW and if I get an email from any of them, I just might respond to it! Well, that can’t be said of everyone I have worked with. Some work relationships went south because I learned the person was shady or we have unresolved issues that are not going to magically disappear just because they popped into my life again with an offer to work together again on something new. Also, if I just accepted your friend request or followed you on Twitter, throwing your promotion services at me right then and there is not going to win me over. I also follow book promotion sites as well as book bloggers on Twitter because I hope to establish a connection with them and get to know more about them should I ever take interest in their book-reviewing or book-promotion services. I want to get comfortable with a person first and get to know them better as well as what services they offer before making the next move.

That said, anybody who is in the business of promoting authors or marketing books who I DO NOT KNOW and who sends me an email offering to promote my book is simply wasting their time. Those emails either get no response or they are deleted.

Not only this, but why would I all of a sudden get all excited about promoting a book that was published over 3 years ago? If the book has been out for a while, I seriously doubt anybody’s going to care if I all of a sudden start promoting it again. An exception is made with books which have evergreen topics – like my book, 365 Tips For Writers. Every December, I spend some time promoting this book because I am hopeful someone who hopes to get more writing done in the new year will see this book and consider buying it. The same goes with my breast cancer ebook; it usually gets touted in October (along with anything related to Halloween). But if one of my books wouldn’t serve that purpose, then it usually doesn’t get another promo push after I finish my initial promo campaign after the book is released. (Sometimes, though, I just don’t have the energy for those promo opps. I have to deal with the occasional funk!)

It’s nice to think that someone took notice of my book and wants to promote it, but in the real world, I know they are only trying to sell their promotion or marketing services. They really don't care if their promotion or review of my book means it will spark sales; they are only interested in getting money from me and hoping I'll be naive enough to give it to them! 

Maybe there are authors out there who are okay with being spammed by these services and have no problem shelling out money to get their book listed on some website or reviewed on some blog, but I am not one of them. If you want to promote one of my books, maybe we should try communication first. Connect with me through Facebook or Twitter and let me know who you are. Let me see your pages or newsfeeds for myself and let me decide if I would like to take you up on your promotion services. I’m not one of those authors who will pay for a review, but I am interested in other things like blog tours, and if I know who you are and what you do, I just might want to click on your links myself to learn more.

The downside of email interviews

For a long time, I have been supportive of using email as a means of interviewing people for my books. Of course, I have made exceptions with this, using Internet relay to phone people who did not have time to answer questions through email. In such cases, it has gone well: I would explain that I am deaf and must use relay for phone calls. I would explain what a relay call was, what the person could expect upon receiving a relay call, and how it might take a little more time than your average phone call because you have to wait a bit to get a response from me because I have to type what I say. But in most cases, I use email.

I have found, though, that there is a huge downside to using email to interview people for books: The fact that email is easy to ignore. For some people, they think “book” and figure I have weeks, months or years to get a response from them, so there’s really no need to hurry with a response. I did not run into this problem when I was writing for SIGNews, because they knew I was writing for a newspaper and I had a deadline to get my article turned in. (I used relay for a lot of THOSE interviews!) But I have noticed this happening a lot when it comes to interviewing people for my books. And it’s starting to get really annoying.

When I contact people to interview for my books, I give them a timeline on when I’d need a response. This particular deadline is not my real deadline; I usually add a little wiggle room to give myself time to go over their response, ask any follow-up questions or check in with them about things which aren’t clear in their answers. So, yes, they do know that I need a response by a certain time, so that has not been an issue in hearing from them again. Sometimes, some of them have even asked for more time, and that was arranged. But the point here is that there was actual COMMUNICATION going on.

With other people I have tried to interview for my books, there would either be no communication at all, or some communication at first and then nothing at all later on. With those I never end up getting a response from, I move on to find someone else to interview. But for those who initially agree to be interviewed then drop off the planet, it’s hard for me to tell if they are still interested. Especially if weeks go by (with me sending a follow-up note) and I don’t hear from them anymore. I completely understand that things can get busy and that life happens. Got no argument there. But after 3 weeks of nothing, I have to wonder if I’ll ever hear from them at all ever again. There’s one person I’ve interviewed for a book and I haven’t heard from her for over a year!

When it gets to this point, that’s when I have to start considering the possibility that I won’t hear from them anymore. I can be very patient with my sources, but it helps to let me know if there’s something holding things up or just a schedule conflict keeping them from getting back to me. But after so many weeks and after so many months, that’s when I need to start thinking that maybe I need to drop this person from the book. I just can’t keep waiting and waiting and WAITING to hear from them again. As far as my personal life is concerned, I have a motto: “I put my life on hold for no one.” And I am beginning to seriously consider adapting that particular motto to my books, especially for the sources I never hear from again. I do have my own deadlines for the books I write. I have SO MANY books going on and so many waiting for their turn for me to work on them that I can’t keep holding things up with ONE book for ONE person I don’t hear from anymore. It just causes problems for the rest of my sources who actually took the time out of their very busy lives to communicate with me. And I’m not going to put my book on a back burner to wait until I hear from that one or more source to remember me and get in touch again. That’s just a waste of my time because chances are good they won’t remember me at all. Especially after so long of not communicating with me at all. And then the book will never get published. It will waste away. And all those people who invested time in it will have done so for nothing. So, no, I won't do that.

So, with this turn of events, I have decided that I will no longer continue waiting forever and a day to hear from people again. I just won’t rely on them anymore. I would’ve loved to include them in my book, but I guess it won’t happen after all. I will have to start dropping people if I don’t hear from them in one month’s time. One month. That’s how long I will wait.

The thing is, in light of these events, I am very hesitant of using email for interviews for future books. I may have to go straight out with relay calls. I may have to suggest it from the very beginning. Or I may have to just rely on quotes from other books to back up or support what I’m saying. (I am seriously thinking of doing this with my book on prayer.) Nevertheless, I am beginning to feel that email interviews are not as reliable as they once were, and that the time has come for me to start rethinking how to include people in my books without losing that connection to them. I really hate bugging people week after week, and I really don’t want to do that anymore. So maybe from now on, I need to come up with a different method of interviewing sources for books that will have more success.

How I survived the HARO deluge

When I was running the blog series for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I decided to solicit stories from breast cancer survivors via Help A Reporter Out (HARO). After my query ran, I heard from a lot of people willing to share their stories. Unfortunately, I was not able to include everybody's stories, because the folks at HARO ran my query so late in the month and I could only use up so much of the following month to continue the series. In addition to this blogging thing, I also work on various writing projects, care for my two young children and keep house. So I was able to only devote so much of the month of November to continuing the series.

Still, that very first experience taught me something: When using HARO, give an early deadline. This is especially true since you might receive e-mails from responders even after your deadline has passed, as I did. They say the later your deadline is, the less priority your query will have. So, give an earlier date than your actual one.

So, the next time I used HARO, I set an early deadline. Thankfully, it was not so much time before my query ran.

My second query for HARO was for writers to share quotes and assorted revision advice for my Revisions book. I needed freelance writers, poets, authors, novelists, songwriters and scriptwriters to share their own revision experiences and advice.

Unlike my first experience using HARO, this time was different.

This time, I received a TON of e-mails from writers, publicists and agents willing to have work included in my book. If you picture me sitting at the desk one minute then being knocked out of my chair the next after being hit by a stream of e-mails, that's pretty accurate. It got to a point where I wanted to huddle in a corner, rocking back and forth and mumbling, "THERE'S SO MANY!"

I was definitely grateful that so many people took the time to share their revision advice for my book, but I was nervous about tackling ALL of those emails. I don't have an exact count as to how many e-mails I got; I stopped counting after I got to 100. Even halfway through the month of going through them, I still had like 80-something to go!

I knew I had to be able to answer ALL of them this time. I COULD NOT lose any of the responders like I had with my last HARO experience.

But how was I going to do that?

I came up with a plan. First, I took a deep breath. One at a time, I told myself. Just answer one e-mail at a time. Don't look at ALL of those e-mails; just deal with them one at a time.

So, I started to communicate with them. The first thing I did was zero in on what the writers specialized in. Some told me "I'm a freelance writer" and others told me they were authors of nonfiction books. However, some of them did not provide too much information about the kind of writing they did, so I had to check out their blogs and Web sites to guage just what they could offer the best revision advice on.

I also had to weed out the ones who expected to be compensated for their time. I'm sorry, but I am not able to pay everyone who contributes to this book. I even said that in my HARO query: There's NO financial compensation. I just could not afford it. Some of the writers opted out when I told them I could not pay them anything, some said "okay, well at least my name and books will be credited." Yes, I DO include everybody's bios, in full detail with links, etc. It's the best I can do in lieu of payment.

After that, I organized the e-mails. Since I was losing people on other pages of my e-mail account, I had to keep everyone on the same page. I'd read any new e-mails that came in that cluttered up the e-mails I had all together from the HARO responders, as well as others that were newer than the HARO e-mails, and kept all of them front and center. I left them unread (making them in bold) until I had the chance to get to them. Since I use G-mail, I labeled ALL of those e-mails, and it was easier for me to find them when a new response came in. When I downloaded a document they sent, I labeled that, as well.

I would also suggest keeping all of the e-mails related to your project in one folder on your e-mail account. I have yet to do this with G-mail, but I have done it with other e-mail accounts, such as Hotmail and Mail2World. This was a HUGE mistake. Those e-mail accounts expire after a SHORT period of time and because I didn't log in there as often after my books were done, I ended up losing A LOT of e-mails, submissions and valuable information from publishers after those accounts expired. Yahoo! seems to be the best e-mail provider for me, for this kind of thing. But I will try G-mail, as well, and see how that works.

Also, I put together an "all-purpose form response" e-mail message. I copied and pasted the different sections of my book into this document (for example, "the chapters for poets" and "the chapters for freelance writers," etc.) so I could copy and paste that into the e-mails for the poets, the freelance writers, the scriptwriters, etc. This was A LOT easier than just typing the same thing again and again and again.

I also put together a brief description of what my book is about, including info on the publisher and the publication date. A lot of the responders requested this information, so, here again, instead of typing then retyping and retyping that information into my responses, I would just copy and paste.

I kept on hand a sample chapter of the book, because this, too, was what many responders requested.

Now, the method of actually answering all of those e-mails...

At first, I tried to answer as many as I could every day. Unfortunately, I fell behind on other things: Articles I had due, other books to work on, etc. (As it is, I had to quit one gig because I just could not keep up with it anymore and I felt really bad I was taking so long to get my articles turned in). So, in order to manage that and everything else I had going on, I just told myself, Okay, I'll spend one hour every day answering the e-mails. Just one hour. (Some people may be able to spend more than one hour a day answering a deluge of e-mails, and that's fine, but set a time limit and stick to it in order to avoid losing yourself in that.) Believe me, this time limit did wonders. I had my sanity back and my children had their mother back. It did slow things down in the rate I was able to answer all of the e-mails, but I had to enforce this time limit in order to balance everything else. It's just the system that worked best for me.

Most important of all, though, I had to remember one thing: THERE WAS A PERSON BEHIND EVERY E-MAIL. It was not just "another e-mail to answer." These e-mails came from real, actual people. It would not be fair to send all of them some form response or thumb my nose at everyone who decided to walk away because I couldn't pay them. I understood where they were coming from, as writers and as authors, mothers, etc., and I made sure they knew I was not out to "steal" their work, or anything. With technology, it's so easy to forget that we are talking to a REAL HUMAN BEING on the other end of the communication method, be it e-mail, chat, online relay, etc. We tend to forget there's a real person there, a person with feelings and emotions, and sometimes people act all "high and mighty" or very rudely.

This brings me to another point: Always be professional. Even if someone says something in an e-mail that sets us off, step away, take a few deep breaths, rant privately and go...break something, if you have to. Just do not try to "get back" at them in your response. Be professional at all times, even when replying to people answering your HARO query.

I assured several of the HARO responders that they'd keep the rights to anything they shared and I made sure I ran by them any edits or changes I hoped to see in what they submitted.

I ended up having conversations with several of them about things outside of the book and it was like meeting new friends. It was a wonderful experience, even though it took me over a month to sort through all of the e-mails I received. My book is better for it, though. My network of fellow writers has grown and my knowledge of other writers and their work has been expanded.

To someone considering using HARO for their projects, my best advice is to be prepared. Keep everything organized and take it just one e-mail at a time. Your writing, and your sanity, will be better off in the end if you do so.

In defense of e-queries

I am still trying to find a literary agent. I sent off a query package last week. Yes, you read that right: It was a PACKAGE. It was my query, synopsis, first three chapters and an SASE. All by snail mail. Costing almost $3. And I had to grumble over that, asking myself, "Do I really want to pay $3 just to be told 'I'm not the right agent for this'?" (That's actually a common response I have been getting. Sigh! I wonder if that's a new polite way of saying NO??)

I really had to think over that one, though. With the economy being in the kind of shape that it is, I have to be careful on what I'm spending money on. I mean, nowadays, people just can't throw money into the wind. Every penny we can save counts! So for this reason, I'm going to start just sticking with sending e-queries instead. The query I sent by post on Monday was my last snail-mailed query.

Of course, not everybody is so accepting of getting queried by email. I've seen quite a few agency sites that will NOT accept e-queries. Period. Too bad, I have to pass on those and try the agencies who do. (I have to wonder why it's so terrible to receive an e-query? I mean, if it's kept to one page, as it should be, then how is that any different than receiving a regular email? On that note, though, I saw one agency where the agent said sending an e-query was "unprofessional." I had to roll my eyes over that one. I also grumbled, "Sending e-queries isn't 'unprofessional.' You wanna talk unprofessional, pal? Fix your typos.")

I realize this means my query is going to HAVE to pull some muscle in trying to sell my story. It REALLY needs to be in the best shape possible. This is where a writer's skill with words must shine: The query must dazzle the agent! It has to be the best query you have EVER written and must contain EVERYTHING the agent wants to see in the query. (Some agents do specify what they want to see in a query.)

Just got to make sure the query doesn't end up reading like a "buzzword dictionary" or lose the agent in understanding just WHAT the story is about. Or make sure it's not cluttered with adjectives or stereotypical catchphrases. As long as the query is professionally written, edited and interesting, my gut tells me that should be enough to justify sending it by email instead of by post.