Within the next six weeks, I plan to send a finished draft of Diary of a Girl in Trouble to as many as a dozen publishers. And then wait for the rejections. Well, maybe not from all of them. At least that is my hope. But I have enough experience with the publication process to know that no matter how well a book is written, most publishers won’t want to invest in it. Of course, self-publication is always an option, but I’d rather not take that route unless there’s no other choice. I’ll save the pluses and minuses of self-publication for a future blog. For now, I’ll focus on four key questions that are weighing on my mind, as I prepare Diary of a Girl in Trouble to take wing into the fierce headwinds of publication.
Are there any errors, even small ones, in my manuscript? Having been an editor even before I took up creative writing, I find this question weighing heavily on me. A misspelling, a run-on sentence, a dangling modifier, a missed comma or period — errors such as these, I fear, could turn publishers against my submission even if they liked the story. And having reviewed multiple drafts of my book multiple times, I may have become de-sensitized to any error that might be lurking there.
Should I try to get an agent? I tried to get an agent when my first book, Fast-Pitch Love, was ready for publication. Twenty-three queries to 23 agents resulted in 23 rejections. Indeed, out of that 23, only a half-dozen or so even bothered to look at the excerpt I sent from my draft. Maybe I’ll give this another try. I now have a support network in place that wasn’t there when Fast-Pitch Love was written, and someone within this network may be able to put me in contact with an agent. But if I can’t get an agent, it won’t sink my ship.
Which publishers should I query? I’m already ahead of the game here, having assembled a list of about 25 publishers that take unsolicited submissions from authors without agents. Within, this group, some are more promising than others, some more prestigious than others. Kensington, for example, is a well-established publisher with many successful titles under its belt. But they turned down Fast-Pitch Love ten years ago and may think no better of my latest book. I may have better luck with publishers like Fountain Square or Bottom Dog Press that are based in Ohio. Being a Buckeye writer, I may get a break from them.
What should I include in my query to publishers and/or agents? This may be the easiest question of the four to answer. Above all, I want to convince them that Diary of a Girl in Trouble will sell. And I believe it will, if it is promoted adequately. I can support that belief with documented evidence from a promotion I sponsored a couple of years ago with my two earlier YA books. This promotion, which cost me over $1,000, pushed both The Bullybuster and Fast-Pitch Love into the top 5 positions in their respective Amazon eBook categories for at least a short time. The company that conducted the promotion sent me screenshots of the Amazon bestseller lists from that time, which I will be glad to share with potential publishers of Diary of a Girl in Trouble. My query will also emphasize the book’s socially relevant message (stopping sexual abuse) and the research I devoted to making the plot plausible and medically accurate. However, the marketability of the book will probably be the thing that makes it or breaks it.
There may be other questions, besides these four, that I will need to answer in my quest for a publisher. But regardless of whether I answer them well or poorly, Diary of a Girl in Trouble will be published.