Publishing Old Manuscripts

Everybody has them. All those books that misfired and never took off or just blew up on the launch pad. They represent years and years of toil and you would like for something to come of them because they represent your heart and soul. So in the new environment of EBooks, you think, well maybe there is something there that escaped the publishers eyes and these books should have been published except for a short sighted editor who couldn't see the diamond in the rough. And so you start tracking them down on your computers.

Usually they are a couple of computers back that you dig out of a closet and there they are; floating around your desktop like space junk. They have weird file names you started giving them after the twenty third rewrite and you have to piece them together like cars in a junkyard. Lets see, I'll use this beginning with this middle and where is the end...ah here it is. There it's a book. So you start to read your old prose. Dammit. This was good! This should have been published! And so you continue, getting excited. Yes. Yes. Readers will finally be able to discover this great story that has been stopped because of some nimrod of a publisher.

And then...somewhere along page thirty two, the thing goes off the rails. Maybe it is the tired prose, the lackluster plot. Maybe it's just sort of hackneyed and old. But there is something missing. Some bit of modernity that gives the book spark. The prose just dries up on the page and is dated and dead and the book turns back into that old manuscript in a moldy box in a basement. And you want it to be good. You really do. You want it to be the book that it could have been, but it's just not.

So you try and resucitate some others, but they fall from the sky like satellites gliding out of orbit. There were problems. There was a reason these books never saw the light of day. And even the ubiquity of e-publishing won't save them. So you pull the plug, let the dust motes settle, and throw the computer back in the corner where it belongs.

And that book stays in darkness....where it belongs.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Why publishers won't buy your book

Mmmmm....this is a tough one. Why wont publishers buy your book. Well, let's break down publishers into it's component parts. We are not talking about Max Perkins. We are talking about someone, probably a twenty something someone or a thirty something someone who quite possibly is female and is working in an office in Manhattan with books flying at her all day long like leaves in a ferocious autumn wind. The books literally rain down and these are books from agents but the slush pile detritus is put into the mix as well. Now put that person in the year 2012

Publishing is on  it's proverbial ass. Mainstream publishing where the brick and mortar press cranks up like an old dinosaur still rules, but there is that comet rolling though space and the temperature is falling. Books still dominate and a publisher can put an author on the map, but at a million kindles a week, the times are a changing.  Let us be clear. This has everything to do with why your book is getting rejected and it has nothing to do with your book getting rejected.  Your book is getting rejected for reasons that mystify and convolute, creating more smoke than fire. Well...so what are they?

Not right for our list. Not right for us. Not right for the genre. Not right. Hmmm. Ok. Don't care for the characters. Could not get into their head. Don't like the voice. Don't reallly see a spot for this book. Too much action. Not enough action. Not enough character development. Too much dialogue. Not enough dialogue. Too Slow. Too long. Too short. Episodic. Been done. No one would care about your characters. Already have a novel like this. No brand. No platform. Just....NO!

Believe me I have heard it all. But here is thing. Do not take it personally. There are so many variables pressing down on this decision that you will hear maybe 1/8th of the truth and that is that they just dont know if they can sell it. And you know what, that is true. No one is sure what sells and what doesn't and throw in the Kindle factor and now you are off to the races. So really, it all comes down to what you think of your work and if you believe in yourself.

Listen to the advice, listen to the criticism, make the changes, don't make the changes, submit it again, write another book. Move on, but never take it personally. It's just business. 

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one word, just one word...plastics

Those Rejection letters that Never Come Anymore

Notice how you just don’t get a response with email? The standard rejection letter for anything now is a no response. Once upon a time we used to get letters, responses from people saying, “no thank you, thank you for your query.” In the cyber world the universal rejection letter is the black void. No response. Not even an effort to deem our request worthy. The impersonality of the computer world is affecting every day life. Humans talk. Not anymore. How often do you talk on the phone now? How often do you chat? Not much I’ll bet.

Whole lives are now carried on through the medium of the cyber word. And that makes for a pretty dull life. We love and hate email. It is a barrier against those we don’t want to talk too and a moat against us when we want to talk to someone. You have to love corporations and the way they hide behind their websites. No longer do we have a human to complain too when the wheels fall off our car, no go to the website and register your complaint. It is the biggest firewall in the world.

The human voice carries emotion, our humanity, the cyber word carries only information that can be deleted in a nanosecond. Even these blogs our highly expendable. A newspaper carried weight, it cried out with its very existence that it be recognized. The blog or the cyber news page is just a button away from vanishing. It is the expendable quality, the absolute evanescence of the interaction that is most frightening. We are human and at some point we will really want to have a conversation again with another human. So what is the guilty secret of email…we are our own worst enemies. We are now afraid of being engaged in a conversation. We are afraid our precious time will be used up by some person we cannot get off the phone. We would rather have those few sentences convey our business and be on on our way. We have now become slaves to cyber time lest we miss even a single nanosecond.

Of course the backside of this is that when we do feel like talking to someone, there are few who will take our call. Those roads once closed are hard to reopen and we get an email a day later saying, “I saw that you called, sorry I was busy.” The strange thing is we have relationships with people where we never hear their voice. That’s weird. So our only chance is to break the cycle. The next time you get an email from a friend or colleague, freak them out and pick up the phone. They probably won’t answer, but you never know. If you get them on the phone, blow their mind and say, “I’m just calling to chat.” Stunned silence will probably greet you, but then again, they might say something. Humans are like that. Once they get talking, it’s hard to shut them up.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January