I was driving myself insane editing my book. Several people encouraged me to just send it off already. So I did. And a little over six weeks later; I received a very nice rejection letter. I say a nice rejection letter because I have been privileges to see many other rejection letters (not my own) and some of them were truly heart breaking.
My rejection letter came from a very well known publishing house. It opened with "this book has great potential". It then listed about three things the publisher thought I could do to improve it, including starting about half a chapter in and taking that first bit and tucking it into the middle of the book.
The letter concluded by wishing me luck but stating that I was not a good fit for their imprint. This is about as good as rejection letters get. And I know that. But I still wanted (briefly) to throw the manuscript under a bus and never write again. That lasted a day. I can't help it. I write.
So I've started implementing the recommended changes. And I know this is a slippery slope into madness because every publisher will have something they want to change. But the suggestions were all the ones I knew I needed to deal with but couldn't actually see because I was too close to it.
So this is a failure and also not a failure. It is a failure on the road to success. Maybe my ambition for a launch date next year was a tad premature? Okay so the time line was wrong. I've still got a book and it and I have great potential.
No comments:
Post a Comment