Take it away, Jolene!
1. Submitted to the largest publisher in the niche market.
2. Rejection.
3. Found a killer awesome beta reader.
4. Did some revisions.
5. Re-submitted to another of the three large publishers in the niche market.
6. Got offer of publication.
7. The Next Door Boys was signed in January of 2011, and came out in October of 2011.
(Seems so simple, right? BUT at this time I didn’t have an agent to help with my contract or to push for a two-book deal, or to push for ebooks to follow the paperback in a timely manner, or, or, or… I don’t care who you publish with, it’s really, really nice to have someone deal with the business/sales end of things)
Next two seem more complicated, but have really been WAY less stressful (aside from maybe the query part) – ready??
1. Begin querying in December of 2010.
2. Don’t eat. Don’t sleep. Hit refresh on email an embarrassing amount per day, or hour, or minute, or you know, whatever.
3. Some requests, some rejections. Keep writing frantically to have new material. This goes on until June of 2011.
4. Offer of rep. from an agent I met on #yalitchat (never underestimate the awesomeness that is twitter)
5. Notify other agents who have one or two of my projects, and pull out hair wondering WHO to go with.
6. My agent goes through almost the same process for submission as I went through for querying – WAY less stressful than querying. I turned it over to her. All I have to do now is keep writing.
7. An editor I really wanted to work with loved Night Sky – I thought this is it! A done deal, but it’s NOT. The board at the publishing house passed. Was told that the writing is stellar, but not enough of a commercial hook.
8. We continue to search, and continue to have editors like my writing, but can’t sell to their pub house.
9. Tell my agent – we’ve talked about finding me an epublisher – find me someone who loves my book as much as I do because I want it OUT. I have other projects I want to focus on.
10. Lauren (my agent) finds an epublisher who loves my story. Sign a two-book deal for Night Sky and Knee Deep. I’m SO SO SO excited to be working with Tribute Books who is in the process of shifting their whole line to the YA market.
The point of this whole long rambling post is that there are a TON of ways to get published. Everyone finds what works best for them, and not just for them, but for each project.
This is what worked for me, and for these particular manuscripts. Well, and my writing career is and always will be a work in progress…
Thanks for having me Jen!!
You can find me HERE
And on goodreads HERE
Click over and see what Jolene's doing these days! Feel free to share your story in the comments! I love hearing how different we all are!
