Before the pandemic, and trying to get tenure, and relocating to a new state, and… I was a writer in search of an agent. I researched, queried, went to conferences, entered contests, followed up on leads, and tried to take each rejection as just another step in the process of becoming a traditionally published writer. What I got for my trouble was a lot of understandable radio silence (agents get SO many queries, it’s a miracle they find anyone) and a small but significant number of encouraging rejections. Five different times I had agents ask for the full manuscript of one of my books, only to ultimately pass. I had an editor read the first few pages of a manuscript at a conference and tell me that there wasn’t anything wrong with it, that I was obviously a talented writer – it just wasn’t the kind of book/protagonist that was selling right now.
Lots of aspiring writers have similar stories. I am definitely not alone in this.
Deciding to self-publish Rell and start working on an MFA put all of that in the background. I can just say that I don’t have time to query like crazy while figuring out self-publishing and doing homework for graduate classes. Until this graduate class…which is all about publishing. In fact, for this upcoming week I had to write about criteria for finding the right kind of agent for my work. The obnoxious version of me wanted to say that talking about my criteria for an ideal agent is like talking about what you’d do if a million dollars fell out of the sky. In reality, there are only two criteria – 1) They are a reputable industry professional. 2) They said “yes.”
I reined in the snark and completed the assignment (like a professional), but I’m not kidding about those being the only criteria for most of us.
I’d like to just rise above all the publishing drama – but, thing is, I’m about to finish editing another manuscript, an alt-Victorian fantasy for adult readers, and I do have plans to shop it before looking into self-publishing again. So it’s back into the arena, or the snipe hunt, or the unicorn quest for me again soon. Oh the adventure.
Jenel Alan 