My big question, as would be any reasonable person’s, was why did these agents request the manuscript? Why did they have me spend money to mail it to them? Why didn’t they say the only repped cookbooks on their website? They wanted to be in the loop. They wanted to know what the latest works were, and therefore accepted my query and manuscript. Forget that it wasted a lot of my time. Forget that it cost me hundreds of dollars in postage. They wanted to be in the loop.
I stopped looking for an agent. It wasted too much of my time.
Searching For A Publisher
I queried publishers that accepted unagented manuscripts. Most of them never replied. Some of the bigger ones were simply annoying and egotistical. I called to verify the contact person to query. I then mailed my query to that person. In the two months that my query sat in his pile of queries, he quit. The new editor simply sent me my query back, unopened, along with a letter that read “This wasn’t addressed to me, he is no longer here. Send it back to my attention.” Two of the biggest publishers I queried did that to me three times before I gave up on them.
I stopped looking for a publisher for the time being. At this point I was well into the book and decided to just focus on the fun of writing it.
Of course, there was always the self-publishing route. I looked into it. Today, it seems to be mainly print on demand (POD). My assessment was that it was very taboo and frowned upon by the industry. I decided that this was not an option.
It’s Written, Now What?
I finished the book. It took me three months to write it, less time than I spent querying agents and publishers. What did I do now? I had no agent, no publisher, and no writing left to do. I did, however, have hope. Monica Wang, an editor at Basic Books, replied to my manuscript quite favorably. She said it was the freshest, funniest thing she had read in ages and that she and her friends enjoyed reading it. Could I please send her the manuscript before it was published? She couldn’t wait for it to come out to read the rest. (Basic Books had switched gears and was no longer publishing anything but serious non-fiction.) That single flame of hope kept me going.
The Big Break (Maybe!)
I went to a party one night. I spoke of my dilemma to various people. As it happened, a guy at the party had just started a publishing company and was looking for his first book. I spoke to him. He was quite green but he really just wanted to say that he was involved with a book. I told him about mine. I got a copy to him the next day and a week later he told me he wanted to do it. I was nervous, though. I was afraid I would lose control to a guy who really didn’t know what he was doing. On the other hand, I wanted to be published. The book was good and I wanted to get it into readers’ hands. We all know what that feels like.
Article comments
1 - Amrita
well i'm setting forth on this phase of the plan so this was good reading. now all i need is to bump into a guy with a publishing company at a party :)
Seriously though, I'm beginning to understand how big a part luck plays in the process