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The Process of Publishing One's Work

In some ways, I should be the last one to be giving advice to other writers on publishing anything. My qualifications on the subject of writing come mostly from my having taught English for thirty-five years and a creative writing class that I designed and taught for twenty-five years. Each spring my students published a sixty-page anthology of their best writing for which the school twice received recognition for the book's high quality by The American Association of Teachers of English. Those books are still the results of which I remain most proud from my career in the classroom.

My own first book, ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, was published in January of 2010 in Baltimore. It is still available in paperback and on Kindle at Amazon.com, but most of the profits go to the publisher, as I receive only 8% for the first seven years. My second book, COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, is a Kindle book on Amazon and yield's 70% profit for me, far more generous than the contract with my first publisher, but the limitation is that the work is an eBook, which can exclude readers of traditional hard copies of books. This may be a conundrum for a writer, who wants his or her friends and family, who are uninitiated into the world of eBooks, to read the work. There is also the choice of self-publishing, but that is another story, one that somehow lacks the luster and dignity of having a traditional publisher seek one's work with monetary compensation (however small) and a willingness to market one's book.

My third book, COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher is now waiting for a home out there in the publishing world, a huge, scary place, especially for relatively unknown writers like me. For better or worse, most of the serious publishers are still in New York City, that bastion of companies like Random House. Of course, sending unsolicited manuscripts to those places is simply not done, unless you happen to be John Grisham, Anne Rice, or Stephen King, so it is necessary to procure an agent, who will represent your work and help to create a pitch to interest a publisher in buying the book through some kind of contract. Most of the respected literary agencies receive at least a thousand queries per month from all over the country and overseas. At times it seems that unknown writers now need an agent in order to find an agent, even to begin communication on any level with a publishing house.

I suspect that some of those large literary agencies have staffs of weary readers, highly trained in the art of spotting just the right hook in a query letter in order for further info to be requested from the author. I often wonder how many queries with great potential are placed on the proverbial conveyor belt, racing thousands of letters and even manuscripts toward some great figurative incinerator. The very hugeness of agencies and their efforts to hurry through all those e-mails and snail mails from hopeful authors is a bit staggering, and I also imagine that agents and their underlings grow jaded by the end of each day in dealing with what must be quite a lot of garbage with which they are expected to deal politely, if at all. “Oh, no! Not another of these.” is a message, perhaps not even spoken aloud, that may dominate life in a literary agency, but sheer volume must be the single greatest annoyance and enemy of those poor readers, and ultimately of writers, who want so much to be appreciated.

Realistic determination on the part of the author is a prerequisite. He must believe deeply in his own work and be willing to do his homework in finding comparable work by already “successful” writers. Freshness is certainly important, but agents seem to be most interested in what will sell. It is very important to know the agencies and their criteria and to know what they're looking for. Read carefully the bio of each agent to find his or her special interest, like thriller, memoir, cookbook, historical fiction, etc.

I've read about successful writers, who knew they had something special in their own work but something not necessarily recognized by literary agents. One example is Kathryn Stockett, author of the wildly popular book, THE HELP, which soon also became a popular film. Ms. Stockett counted forty-five rejections in a row after which she didn't keep careful track any more, but estimates that there were at least sixty rejection letters in a row for her book. Think of all those incinerators containing the ashes of her query letters and sample chapters. This has inspired me in the sense that so far, as of May 8, 2012, I have sent fifty-four query letters and in some cases with sample chapters, when requested and have received fourteen rejection letters, all very polite but mostly very impersonal notes sent also to zillions of other hungry writers. Only one of those actually named my book and gave me encouragement to keep going with it. Such is the experience any unknown author without entree can expect in attempting to find an agent, let alone a publisher. Some agents tell you to expect a response in six months, so it is necessary to send simultaneous queries to many agencies, especially if you're my age (sixty-six) and want to get through the actual publication process of your book some time before your eightieth birthday.

There are also people who simply must write, not for money or fame, but for the joy of expression for its own sake and perhaps for the satisfaction of sharing their thoughts, and sentiments. Blogs are perfect venues for that kind of writing, and in essence, if you’re writing a blog, you’re “published,” because you’ve a readership, even if only one other person.

My comments here cannot be considered sour grapes just yet. The process is not over for me until I've sent out well over a hundred query letters and there is no hope of finding an agent and publisher. Right now I still feel that I'm “in the game.” Maybe when I turn eighty and have not yet published COME SEPTEMBER, I may get back to you on my blog or with a sky writer to say that I'm feeling a bit sour about the whole thing. Only time will tell. The challenge is enormous in the quest to be published, but so are the rewards.

JB

Drivers Ed, Summer of 1962

 

When summer came, I took the Driver’s Ed course at Dad’s request, mainly because he was concerned about insurance rates, and at least a “B” in the class would mean more dollars in his wallet if I were going to be driving his car. Though the classrooms at Gavit High were still not air-conditioned, and the rooms were all stifling, the actual driving portion of the class was enjoyable, not just because the 1962 Pontiac we drove was air-conditioned, but because we were actually driving. Mr. Batcomb, our instructor, was an irascible baseball coach with a flat top haircut, and a nose that in profile resembled a huge peninsula jutting out from what seemed some undiscovered country. A nervous, insecure, and very impatient man, Mr. Batcomb was an almost comical choice to teach such a class. Except for his ample nose, he reminded me of the young Bob Newhart, who was a popular new comedian at the time, apologetic only in the most sarcastic ways. As a baseball coach, Mr. Batcomb believed that any boy not active enough in sports to be on some varsity team was worthless and should simply be set adrift on an ice floe somewhere up north, never to be heard from again. In dealing with me, even on my best days, he always had a “Hrumph” in his attitude, an attitude that he made no attempt to conceal. If his class had been a Monopoly game, my report card would surely have said, “Do not pass go. Do not pass my class. Do not collect $200.”

There were three other sophomores in the car besides me. The student driving at any time would always have Mr. Batcomb sitting next to him while the other three students would be in the back seat observing, judging, and sometimes snickering. In order to avoid possible law suits, I will use only the first names of my Driver’s Ed cohorts, Greg, Sharon and Louise. It should be remembered here that all our very lives were in the hands of whoever was at the wheel, and that the only way at times to avoid reaching critical mass was to close your eyes and plug your ears, unless of course you were driving. The most valuable thing I learned in Driver’s Ed was that if you have a CAUTION, STUDENT DRIVER sign on top of your car, you own the road. Other vehicles just move out of the way, pulling over onto road shoulders, lawns, sidewalks, anywhere, to escape.

Gail and Darlene Desento became Driver’s Ed legends the second week, Gail plowing through some trash cans in an alley, where her instructor had evidently and mistakenly hoped to practice while avoiding any actual cars or traffic. Her twin Darlene managed to top her sister the third week by scraping the passenger side of the car on a pump station while pulling in to get gas.

In our car Greg, who looked like Ichabod Crane, always had to move the seat back when he drove so that Sharon, Louise and I ended up chewing on our knees, which weren’t that far from the car’s interior roof by then. Greg received a “B” in driving skills at the end of the course because of his tendency to tail gate. Mr. Batcomb told him it wasn’t necessary to count the hairs on the head of the driver in front of us, but Greg insisted evidently on being a real stickler for detail. Louise always had to use a cushion in order to boost her height beyond that of a toddler. The contrast between her and Greg was comical, because Greg was so tall, that if he ever fell down, he’d be out of town, and Louise was short enough to play a Munchkin in any possible remake of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

The less said about my driving, especially my parallel parking, the better, but I must say something about Sharon, who was a nervous girl anyway, even when not driving, who would two years down the road become one of those screaming maniacs at the mere mention in homeroom of the Beatles. Just the name “Paul” would make her pass out, so it’s easy to imagine the kind of driver she turned out to be. The first omen about her skill at the wheel of a car was when she was asked on her first day to prepare for take-off. She buckled her seat belt, adjusted her seat, started the engine, and then leaned over to look through the center of the windshield, narrowing her eyes, which we in the back seat could see in the rear view mirror. When asked by Mr. Batcomb what she was doing, Sharon answered that she was getting a good view of the hood ornament. When asked why, she replied, “Well, how else can I aim the car?” Greg looked at me, his Adam’s apple moving so far up, that it disappeared, and his face tightening to the point that his ears moved back and flattened against the sides of is head, his eyes the size of saucers.

The final week of the course, we were expected to drive on the expressway, observing speed limits and other driving musts, like staying in our own lane. As Sharon buckled up, we tightened our seat belts too, the way we might be secured in our roller coaster seats at the county fair grounds. All went well until we reached the expressway, where Sharon needed to blend into the flow of other cars. The speed limit was sixty-five, which Sharon was following, but when she hit a pot hole, the car swerved just enough for her to lose control and then panic instantly. Letting go of the steering wheel and covering her face with both hands, she began whimpering, “Oh no, I’m gonna get an ‘F.’” No one was driving the car, which was hurling itself down the expressway at sixty-five miles per hour. Meanwhile, Mr. Batcomb lunged for the steering wheel to keep us in our lane, as Louise screamed, “To hell with your damned ‘F.’ We’re gonna be killed!” Needless to say, Sharon did, in fact, receive an “F” in the skills part of the course, even though for the written portion she received an “A.” Years later at our twentieth year class reunion, I saw Sharon again, and her husband had taken away her driving privileges by then.

We all survived the class with 
our lives, but there was one more test of our mettle, which the powers that be imposed upon us. The class was shown two films called, “The Last Prom” and “Signal 30,” which were intended to scare the living daylights out of anyone who had the slightest fragment of careless intention for driving left in his or her psyche. These films were in color and showed without apology or any attempt to reduce horror, the aftermaths of actual auto accidents. There were severed limbs, heads, people halfway through windshields, a trucker, who had hit another semi, his load of metal pipes having become deadly missiles and having gone right through his head and face like huge spears. These are the only details I can relate, because well before the end of the second movie, I had to leave the room in a cold sweat, despite the heat of the day. I’ve often wondered how effective those films were in terrifying those other teens into being more cautious drivers. In fact, having watched most of the films myself, I’m surprised that I was ever persuaded or motivated again even to get into a car, let alone to drive one.

(Excerpt from John's second book, COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age)