Ninety More Days of Humiliation? Sign Me Up!

by Sharon Kayne

Well, the 90 days are up. The 90 days that the publisher said it would take to review my submission before it was deleted. Of course, the publisher also said I’d get some sort of response from them within the 90 days—one of which could be a request for “more time.” And if the 90 days passed and I’d received no response, I was urged to resubmit.

Because that’s what every writer wants to do—spend three more months being ignored.

Okay, I get it. This publisher gets hundreds of unsolicited submissions constantly flowing through their inbox. I’m assuming lots of them are crap. And even if lots of them are great, they can only publish some of them. I also get that the publisher is doing me a “favor” by looking at my submission. Of course, if they end up publishing my book, the “favor” would go both ways, since they would make money from something I created. But they don’t act that way. So it’s a really sucky way to do business.

Not to mention a sucky way to spend three months.

Some people—these are the no-news-is-good-news people—will say that it’s better to hear nothing than to get a rejection. I disagree. At least with a rejection, you know that someone actually looked at your manuscript and considered it at least briefly. When you hear nothing, you have no idea if they’ve looked at it and are thinking it over, if they’ve decided against it and just haven’t gotten around to rejecting you, or if it’s just collecting digital dust. I do know that the publisher received my manuscript. That’s because the Submittable website shows that my query is “in process.” It’s been “in process” since January. I believe legislation has moved through Congress faster than that.

I have queried publishers before, and I still find the whole routine demoralizing. I worked hard to create the manuscript. I’ve also had beta readers and my critique group read and hone said manuscript. I know my manuscript isn’t right for every publisher out there, but that does not mean it’s not without merit. Of course, I haven’t put all my literary eggs in one basket. I’ve submitted the same manuscript to a couple of other publishers, and they’ve just as conscientiously ignored me too.

I don’t, of course, absolutely need a publisher. Thanks to Amazon and other digital platforms, I can be self-published. I already am, in fact. But self-publishing a book isn’t the same as selling a book to readers. And as an indie author, you’re all alone out there. I think my current manuscript has more commercial potential than my others did, so I’d like to have a publisher behind it. Plus, I think that’s probably the only way to get actual, physical copies of one’s books into bookstores.

Not that a publisher will do everything for you. It’s my understanding that very few of them do any marketing anymore. They leave that up to the author. Plus, I wonder what’s become of the industry as a whole. I recently heard that one publisher fired all their human editors to replace them with AI, which is deeply disturbing. If some publisher told me they were going to serve up my book to an AI editor, I’d pull my manuscript.

But I digress. The whole process of querying a publisher feels a lot like tilting at windmills (to borrow a literary phrase). Recently, a writing group I belong to offered a great-sounding class on turning your book into a screenplay. The instructor, who’d spoken to our group, had the right experience and I’m sure gave lots of great information. I was tempted to take the class. But I didn’t because I had this sinking feeling that I’d just end up with another impossible dream (to borrow from that same literary reference, but via its Broadway incarnation). I didn’t think I could take the additional demoralization. I’m at my limit now.

I am going to resubmit my manuscript for another 90 days of pain and humiliation. And I’m going to try a couple other publishers too. But if none of them come through, I’ll pick up my demoralized ass, self-publish my next book, and call it a day. It is good to have options I guess.

I post to my blog every Sunday. Follow me on Facebook or Instagram, or sign up for my monthly newsletter (here) to be informed of my new posts. Also, please follow me on Amazon, Goodreads and BookBub.