{"id":476,"date":"2014-04-05T19:47:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-05T19:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/2014\/04\/05\/a-promising-development-in-the-quest-for\/"},"modified":"2014-04-05T19:47:11","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T19:47:11","slug":"a-promising-development-in-the-quest-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/2014\/04\/05\/a-promising-development-in-the-quest-for\/","title":{"rendered":"A Promising Development in the Quest for Publication"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

During this past February’s Love Is Murder writers conference, I sucked up my courage and tried to sell my YA spy novel, The Boy Who Knew Too Much<\/em>, during a pitch-a-thon or pitch-a-palooza event. Essentially this is speed dating where you have four minutes with an agent or editor to make them believe you have a book worth publishing. Despite my pathological avoidance of self-promotion, I did well. All but one of the people I spoke with asked me to proceed to the next step of the process, sending sample chapters or a synopsis via e-mail.<\/p>\n

More than two months have passed since then, and the only responses\u00a0had been two kindly worded rejections. I figured, perhaps belatedly, that it was time to query more agents and spent this last week crafting a pitch letter.<\/p>\n

Friday morning, I checked my email on my iPod and saw that I had a response from one of the editors from Love Is Murder. I opened the e-mail hoping this rejection would let me down as easily as the others. It took a moment to realize this wasn’t a rejection. It read, “We are interested in reading the rest of the story.” This was followed by a request for the full manuscript. Not a bad way to start the day.<\/p>\n

This is definitely encouraging, but being the cautious type I immediately reminded myself the result could just be rejection at a higher level. But at least I have reached a higher level.<\/p>\n

Also, I don’t have an agent and I wonder if it is wise for me to deal directly with a publisher. Sure, I won’t be giving away 10 percent of my earnings, but agents get that money by looking out for their authors’ interests. When I received that e-mail, I had two letters sitting on the table by the door ready to be mailed to agents (yes, actual physical letters to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service). I considered rewriting the letters to mention a publisher has expressed interest in the book, but\u00a0decided to mail them as is. I can add this new information to any queries I make next week. Perhaps I will send a short e-mail to those two agents: “Since I mailed my query, a publisher has expressed interest in my book.” Can’t hurt.<\/p>\n

I did send the full manuscript to the publisher on Friday. I don’t see any point in delaying. I’m not making a commitment, and they could still reject me. It’s just another step towards publication, and a promising one. A publisher wants to read The Boy Who Knew Too<\/em> Much, and that has to be a good thing, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During this past February’s Love Is Murder writers conference, I sucked up my courage and tried to sell my YA spy novel, The Boy Who Knew Too Much, during a pitch-a-thon or pitch-a-palooza event. Essentially this is speed dating where you have four minutes with an agent or editor to make them believe you have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[290,171,471,172,131,132],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-love-is-murder","tag-publishing","tag-the-boy-who-knew-too-much","tag-writing","tag-ya-books","tag-ya-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5foza-7G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westhoffpws.com\/jeffreywesthoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}