Interview with Dr. Ronald J. Frederick, Author of Living Like You Mean It - Page 3

How do you deal with rejection?

Oh brother, the rejections were tough.  Most of them came in the form of highly impersonal form letters.  It got a little depressing at times and frustrating especially when I got a few in a row.  But, fortunately, there were little bright spots along the way that kept me going.  One agent, Betsy Amster, who I am indebted to, was very kind and helpful.  She took the time to give me constructive feedback which helped me see what I needed to do to move forward.  While each round of rejections was a blow, they also motivated me to work harder, to reach out to others for help, and find a way to crack the code!  But, I will say that, by the time I got to my last round of submissions, I had doubts about continuing.  I figured that I had given about 2.5 years of my life to this project and, if it didn’t fly this time, maybe the universe was telling me it was time to put my focus somewhere else.  Fortunately, it finally took flight. 

Funny story: one of the rejections letters came in the same day I got an offer from a publishing house.  I thought that was perfect timing! 

How long did it take your book to be published from the time you submitted and was accepted to the time it was finally released?

Let’s start at the beginning.  I worked on my proposal for about a year before I tried to get literary representation.  Over the course of two years, I did about three rounds of submissions to literary agents.  After the first round of rejections, I went back to the drawing board and worked on my proposal (which included the first three chapters of the book) with a writing coach for about a year and then tried again.   After the second round of rejections, I decided to hire both an editorial consultant and a marketing consultant, both of whom were recommended to me by colleagues, and that turned out to be extremely helpful.  I then did my third round of submissions and, fortunately, two agents came forward who wanted to work with me.  Interestingly, both of them remarked that my proposal was far better than most things that come across their desk.  I guess all the work paid off!  The agent I decided to go with then began pitching it to the different publishing houses and within a few weeks we had offers from two.  I then had eight months to finish the book.  Nine month after that it was on the bookshelves for sale. 

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