Adventures in Publishing

Don’t be fooled by that title. There’s no publishing. Yet. But, I sure can tell you how soul-sucking the process is.

A year ago, I decided to write a book. It’s not the first time I’ve had such a lofty idea: When I was 5, I was going to be Wonder Woman.

Every day after school, I would go outside in the yard, glance around to make sure no one was looking, and spin — just like Wonder Woman did to shed her boring civilian clothes and magically be dressed in her shiny costume. Things never quite panned out like I thought they would, but I did end up with some cool bruises from smacking into the mulberry tree. Cracking the publishing industry is even harder (and only slightly less dizzying) than transforming into a superhero.

The thing is, you don’t just go and send your book to a publisher, unless it’s a small publisher who accepts unsolicited submissions, because that’s not how those big dogs work. No, you have to attract a literary agent’s attention. Then, the agent must fall in love with you, OK, your idea really, and pitch your book to a publisher. If it sounds kinda like Tinder, it’s because it kind of is. Except it has a seedier feel to it, so maybe it’s more like Ashley Madison. You don’t flat-out sell an agent on your book, first you have to do some sucking up, show that you have taken the time to research previous titles the person has shepherded through to the printing presses, show that you know something about the person, like he or she enjoys drinking pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. It’s basically stalking.

Imagine doing this more than once.

It gets old. And exhausting. So, I just started being really brazen about the whole thing. My query — that’s what you call the initial contact that is supposed to hook someone on your idea — is pretty good* but no bites. I’ve done some goofy stunts, like tweeting directly to big-time agents, which is probably the social media equivalent of walking around with the back of your skirt tucked into your underwear. I’ve tried reaching out to authors I admire and one actually wrote me back — the Bloggess — which was amazing… but she didn’t find me charming and wonderful enough to set up a meeting with her agent, which honestly, was my hope. I even tried to wage a Twitter campaign to get David Harbour to help me out. That guy will do anything. Turns out you need more than three people to retweet you to really grab his attention.

So… Now what?

I think, actually, I might try another, simpler route to publishing… I am going to work the comedy circuit for awhile, wait some tables to make ends meet, land my own late-night talk show, poke endless fun at our jack wagon president, write a joke-y fake book about the astonishingly dumb things he says and then have a real publisher actually publish it. That would be soooooo much easier.

 

 

 

*This is one of the queries I sent out that actually got a near-immediate response — because the guy wanted to know why I called him a hard ass. Alas, while it generated some back-and-forth emails — and he insisted he wasn’t really a hard ass — turns out he was because he turned my book down. He said “I appreciated your brio and candor but unfortunately I didn’t connect to the voice on the page in the way that an agent must.” I don’t know why that stings — I mean I don’t know him, why should I care? — but it kinda does. Also, I didn’t know “brio” is actually a word — I thought it was just the brand of those lame doctor’s office toys.

Dear XXXX,