Submitting a book to a Publisher, dealing with Rejection and what next?

Dear Simone,

So sorry for the delay on this. I enjoyed reading your submission and I think it has a lot of commercial potential. Unfortunately, at the moment, because we are so oversubscribed with submissions, we are only taking on authors who have three books ready to go, which I know is a very unfair demand on new authors! I would encourage you keep going with your writing, and of course to submit elsewhere. But if you find that you still haven’t got a publishing contract when you have another book or two written, do get back in touch and I will consider them again.

All the best,

Amy Durant
Editorial Director
Sapere Books
saperebooks.com
@SapereBooks

Despite my cartoon caption I was actually delighted to receive this email. Chris was a little bit confused as to why I was so pleased with it, after all it was a rejection email. Yes, it was, but with some positive feedback that proved that the last 5 years of writing my book Under a Greek Spell hasn’t been in vain. I sent my manuscript to Sapere Books at the beginning of May and I’d completely forgotten about it, so for Amy to read the book and give me some feedback was much more than any other publishing companies had done.

The novel and I have been on a journey, in fact I ended up having a holiday in Mykonos to do some all important research.

It’s also been a very steep learning curve from how to get the story down on paper to how to get it published. The latter is work in progress.

The story was initially read by a couple of friends and their feedback gave me the confidence to carry on. Then came a couple of professional critiques and one of those was particularly harsh. But on the advice of Dea Parkin at Fiction Feedback I left the book for a couple of months and then did a rewrite. Then the book had a Structural edit which required some more tweaking. It was then critiqued again before finally being sent for a Copy-edit. All this was carried out by Fiction Feedback. Of course all this requires a lot of time, patience and money and I have been in the fortunate position to treat my writing as a hobby albeit an expensive one.

I’m sure many writers have to cram their writing alongside a job and family and to write 3 books before contemplating publishing is a massive ask. My friends and family want to read my book now and the mere thought of writing another 2 full-sized novels before publishing just doesn’t appeal. Also I dare say any would be publishers would like the books to be a similar genre and quite frankly my head isn’t in the right place at the moment to write a girly romance story.

So my short-term solution is going down the self publishing route. I say short-term but even then we’re looking at next spring for my book to emerge. I’m now on the final read through to make sure the copy-editor didn’t hit the delete key too many times. I’ve got a self publishing company lined up and their identity will remain top-secret until my contract is signed and emailed. I don’t want thousands of writers reading this blog and beating me to it.

So I will endeavour to keep you updated on this exciting journey and hopefully as spring emerges next year so to will my book and lets hope it’s an early spring ready for some romance 😍.

 

 

 

 

 

The book is finished………

‘Thank goodness for that’ my close friends and family cry – especially Chris who comes home from a full day at work to find me slumped over the computer declaring that I’ve been busy all day. Luckily he’s a brilliant cook otherwise we’d have the local takeaways on speed dial.

There’s been months of writing and many people have played a part in this amazing journey so a HUGE – Thank you to you all.

I’d like to especially mention Sandra (The Grammar Queen) who has spent hours correcting my heinous grammar and punctuation. I know one of these days I should embark on some sort of English grammar course.

Also thanks to Lily Newman and the Tuesday Club girls for all their encouragement in the last two years (www.tuesdayclubgirls.co.uk). Lily our mentor has kept me focused on writing and achieving my goal of finishing Under A Greek Spell.

There is also Jen (Miss Whip Cracker) don’t ask – another story, who has nudged me along each week and read the book in its raw A4 217 page format. She’s on her way now with it – probably pulling it on a sledge.

So you’d expect me to be running around like a kid in a sweetshop with a £20 budget. I’ve since found out there is quite a lot of hard work to do just yet to get the book to an agent. Then as Milly Johnson the novelist points out ‘getting a book deal is not the top of Everest, it’s base camp’.

So as I’ve not even got the book published I will resume my position at the base of South Head standing at 494 m (1621 ft) and dream of Everest at 8,848 m (29,029 ft)