TheBanyanTree: ack, oy, alas

[Peter Macinnis]

All too often, it isn't what you know, it's who you know.  Most of my
publication has happened that way, and i am lucky to have an in with
an informal bunch of jobbing editors, who share me around.  That means
I can get past the front door.  It may smack a little of Grub Street,
but I rarely knock back an offer of work unless I am overloaded,
because it keeps them aware of me.

How do you get known?  Easy -- publish something, anything, in print,
preferably in the same general stream as your target publisher(s).
Maybe in a magazine or something like that, so it is not a total
Catch-22/vicious circle.  Then write to the publisher, no ms, just a
one-pager, pointing out that you have been published, indicating that
you have checked their list, and you match it, that you know what is
around and similar, and would they like to see more.  If they think
you have selected them with care, they are more likely to say "OK,
let's have a look".

Publishers want something that is just like what is selling well, but
then they say "oh, that's just like so and so -- it's already been
done!"

Agents are a pain -- I tried one once, but she only wanted people who
were already best-sellers, and never sold anything for me, and then
dropped out of the business, sending back the mss by COD mail (I was
cunning, and got the Post Office to let me take a look, saw the return
address, and said I had never heard of the person, suspected a scam,
and walked away).  If you are going to an agent, you need to pitch to
them in much the same way, and you need somebody who has been in the
game a few years.

If the publishers (or agent) are halfway decent and turn you down,
they will suggest somebody who may take it or you.  Be prepared to
consider that the product may be wrong for that published -- one for
whom I am currently doing book no. 9, and for whose wife I have done
five books, knocked back a proposal recently -- actually, it was more
than a proposal, it was a completed ms -- the useful information stuff
that I posted here.  It's OK in small doses, but doesn't work as an
80,000-word barrage.

It ain't what you know, it's who you know -- and you don't know the
people you thought you knew as well as you thought you knew them . . .

In short, each of us needs to find our own way through.  But don't let
them wear you down -- I wonder how many publishers knocked back J. K.
Rowling?

Endeavour to persevere!

peter