Wanting to be published so bad that I flirted with Predatory Publishers

I worked for about 3 months on a line by line edit, which I thought was a real drag. I also pulled Kristine into the editing process and she was much better at it than me. After completing the edit to the best of our ability, I sent the revised manuscript with many less dashes to my pseudo agent – with my hope renewed that getting the manuscript published was just a few months away.

My optimism seemed to have some firm grounding when my agent contacted me to let me know about a publisher that was looking for first time authors with real talent. They were looking for authors like me. She wanted me to contact them directly by email with the first chapter of the manuscript attached. I did as she asked and within a couple of days, I received a very promising email in return asking for the whole manuscript. So far they liked what they saw, and they wanted to see more.

I rushed off an email thanking them for the opportunity with the full manuscript attached. Within a few days there was another email. This one was as breezy and upbeat as the previous ones had been, but it did not take long to figure out that they were not offering me a “traditional” publishing deal. Traditional means that they will buy publishing rights (in other words they pay you), and then get your book into print.

They were offering a modification to the “traditional” plan. In the “modified” plan I share the risk with them by paying them to publish my book. I certainly understood the risk I would be taking, but I struggled to understand the exact risk they were taking. It seemed like they were getting paid on the front end, and whether I ever sold a book they were already paid.

I sent a polite email declining their offer to share the risk.

For about a year and a half I would receive bulk emails from my “personal” agent and the firm in general. Usually they included a line about “all the email flying around,” something about all the books they had been selling, and how they hoped the next one would be mine. I agreed with this hope, but with each month the hope dimmed a little.

As the time passed, I began to think that it was increasingly unlikely that my agennt would ever get my book sold. So I did some searches for publishing companies that publish first time authors, but are not Vanity Presses. A Vanity Press is a place that you pay to publish your book. I guess the idea is that it is vanity to want to see your book in print so badly that you are willing to pay for it. I would really like to see my book in print, but I am not at a place monetarily where I can afford this type of vanity.

I found a publisher that said it specialized in first time, undiscovered authors with real talent. I thought that sounded like me.  There web-site also said that they read every manuscript, but accepted less than 5%.  I thought that they must be pretty serious. There was also an offer from the president of the company to call him directly to let him know that you had sent in your manuscript. If you did that he would make sure that your manuscript got sent to the head of the line. I sent my manuscript in and because I am not a terribly patient person I called the president and got my manuscript moved to the front of the line.

A few days later I received a pretty bulky package via Federal Express. The opening was a warm congratulatory letter. They liked and wanted to publish my manuscript. There was a lengthy contract for me to sign and date and return. There was one other thing, since I was a first time author there was some risk on their part. I mean after all no one has heard of me, so in some ways it was a pretty big risk. It just seemed fair to them to share the risk. Here was the deal, they wanted to split the risk about 80/20. They would assume 80% of the risk and I would assume 20%. They were going to put about $20,000 on the line in blood, sweat and tears and – oh yeah – printing the book. All they were asking which seemed more than fair to them was $5,000 from me.

Here’s the sad part: I was so dazzled by the letter and how talented they thought I was, and that they had sent along a return Fed Ex package with the shipping pre-paid, that I thought they must really be serious. This seems legit. This is finally my big break. I thought this is expensive, but worth it, and after all they were taking a bigger risk.

I set-up a little celebration with a little wine and a special presentation of the acceptance letter for Kristine. Kristine was really excited for me, but a little nervous about the $5000. She said we should definitely do it, but maybe it would be a good idea to check out the publisher on line. I thought she was right we weren’t exactly swimming in money; I mean we would be after the book, but at the moment it was a little tight.

First, I showed her the publisher’s web-site. She thought it looked nice. Next she suggested that we search for the publisher on the general web. The first hits after the publishers own site often involved the word “fraud.” One helpful website about publishing said never, ever, under any circumstances, pay an agent or a publisher. Agents and publishers, who are asking for money, simply are not on the up and up. All in all the search was pretty depressing. I decided instead of a celebration I would throw a pity party.

In all this there was one silver lining. At the least I had made the “publisher” spend money on mailing me the contract, and for the return Fed Ex package. It was small, but it was a little victory. The bigger victory in all of this was not sending them the check for $5000.

Pseudo Agents and Phony Critiques

The odds are stacked against getting a book published, especially if you have never had one published before. I did a little research and pretty quickly learned that in order to really have a shot you need an agent. So I started sending out “query letters” to different agents who were accepting new clients. I sent one query to a group of agents in New York City. I received a reply within a day saying that they were interested in reading more, and to send them the whole manuscript, which I did.

A couple of days later I received an email saying that they would like to represent me and an attached contract. I signed the contract feeling like I was only months away from being a published author.

The next email was from my personal agent saying that in order to really market my work, I needed to have a professional critique done. 

A professional critique is supposed to be an unbiased assessment of the work that will evaluate its marketability, style and editing. It just so happened that my agent worked with an editing firm that would give me a really helpful professional critique for $300.

This is where the story gets embarrassing. I paid the three hundred for the critique. (When you have a dream you are willing to spend a little, and what’s $300 when you have a potential bestseller on your hands?)  A few day later I got an email back from the professional, the gist of the critique was: this work is good for the current adult fiction market, but you used way too many dashes. Truth be told I do love the dash - but am not always sure where to use it – so I err on the side – of using it a bunch. The dash part seemed relevant to my actual work - I felt like the rest may have been copied and pasted from other critiques.

My agent followed up with an email saying that it was good news that the book was good for the current market, but bad news the manuscript needed a line by line edit before she could really pitch it. But, even in the bad news there was good news, she could refer me to really good professional editors who could edit my work for between $1000 and $2000.

I’m happy to report I didn’t pay that amount. Instead I personally went to work editing the manuscript declaring death to the dashes – in spite of my great love for them.

Writing, dreams and the pursuit

I started dreaming of being an author in elementary school. I'm not sure what grade I was in, but I remember walking to my Grandma's after school. The Martian Chronicles had been airing every night on television, and it seems to me that the Carter - Reagan campaign was in full swing, so there was a bunch of talk about the Soviet Union. Walking to Grandma's I started dreaming about writing and publishing a book called The Russian Chronicles. In my elementary mind it was going to be six volumes, each volume being about 1000 pages, and it would of course be a run away bestseller, made into a movie and a weekly television show. Of course in elementary school I also dreamed of being a pro-athlete (in about any sport you can think of), a preacher, an astronaut, and eventually the President.

In high school the pro athlete dreams began to diminish a little when it was a struggle for me to start on a class "D" JV team. As I struggled to start for the Colon Magi, I began to wonder what my chances were of making even a really bad pro team. The pro dreams are mostly dead, though in my most delusional moments I still wonder about the senior - I mean - champions tour in golf.

While the pro-athlete dreams have slowly died, the dreams of being a writer have remained. The dream remained during college, as my roommate and I would stay-up late talking about what we were reading, and how much life experience we would need before we could really be writers.

The dream remained in my early twenties. I purchased a lined notebook and wrote in the front cover, The works of John West complete and unabridged. (That was a fairly short volume - Three pages). The dream remained in my mid-twenties when I saw my old college roommate for the first time in a few years, and told him confidently, "I'll be published by the time I'm thirty." The dream was still alive in my late twenties when I helped start a writer's group and actually did some writing. (I think then is when I first came to grips with the fact that in order to get a book published, I would actually have to write one).

The dream remained in my early thirties, as I settled into being a dad. In my early thirties the conviction grew that if I wanted to write I better get at it pretty soon. In my mid - thirties I actually started a story and plugged away at it for awhile. Then life got pretty crazy, and I went back to school, but by that point I had plugged away at that story long enough, that I actually had about 15,000 words. It's tough to altogether walk away from 15,000 words. I had a sense that I was just putting it on hold until life became less crazy.

Well, life really never got less crazy, in fact I changed jobs, and we moved for awhile into my sister's basement with our four kids, while they lived upstairs with their six kids. In the midst of the craziness, I simply decided that I needed to finish, that life might never feel less crazy to me until I was eighty, and who knows if I'll make it that far. So, bad timing or not I started writing again. I made a log book for myself, and kept track of the dates and how much I wrote. I wrote in the free moments at work and I wrote in the free moments at home.

By October of 2007 I had gotten to about 50,000 words, and I could see how the story was going to end, so I made a goal of finishing by Christmas. Two months later I had around 77,000 words. From my perspective, some of it was pretty awful, some was ok, and some was actually not bad. At any rate it was done. Now here's the thing, even though the end results were mixed there was and is something beautiful about the pursuit. There is beauty in actually doing the work, whether or not the end results are themselves beautiful.

So I start this blog as a way of encouraging myself to continue at the pursuit. Who knows where the chase may lead...