I've always loved to write. I actually wrote my first trilogy when I was in high school. The first book was about 250 pages, the second and third were around 150. When I read them today, I cringe at how horrible they are. So in my freshman year of college, I decided to take another stab at writing a novel.
The book was inspired by an abandoned fraternity house on the corner of my campus. I was a Journalism major at the time and my curiosity got the better of me. I spent a solid week researching what happened to the abandoned frat house and was stunned at what I found.
Let's just say my university was in the right to shut the frat down. The house still stands as an eerie reminder of what can happen to a fraternity that goes a step too far.
The creepy house on the corner of my campus that's currently being renovatedCourtesy of Google Earth
This sparked an idea for a novel.
I wrote about a journalism major who looked into the mystery behind the abandoned fraternity house on her campus. The closer she got to the heart of the mystery, the more an unknown man called her threatening to kill her. It's a fun story, trust me.
So I wrote the book and the entire 200 pages took me about half of my freshman year and part of the summer to write. In my sophomore year, I began writing the sequel and editing the first novel when I didn't feel like writing.
As I edited, I realized how attached to the story I was and how much I wanted others to read it. I then began the process of submitting my manuscript to publishers. For those of you who don't know how that process works, here's the SparkNotes version.
When you are an author, you either have an agent or you don't. If you have an agent, they sell your book to publishers on your behalf, negotiate your contract, etc. If you don't have an agent like me, then your manuscript is labeled as an 'unsolicited submission' and you need to do all of the work yourself.
That means researching publishing houses that accept unsolicited manuscripts, writing your own cover letter, editing your own novel, and doing the work of a middleman for yourself.
Finding a publisher in and of itself is a long hard process. There are some publishers that ONLY want books are written about or that feature sharks (it's happened). There are other publishers that don't want your book to contain any swearing or explicit material.
There are some publishers that publish such niche material that you wonder how they're staying afloat. But once you find a possible home for your book, you're excited that you've successfully dug through the trash and might have found a treasure.
Then comes the long list of what the publisher wants from you. A publisher may ask for the first three chapters of your book, the first 50 pages, or just a two paragraph summary of the entire thing. One publisher wanted me to do a beat-by-beat summary of the entire book which is essentially a bulleted list of every single thing that happens in the novel.
The stuff they can ask for might be crazy, but it's to make their lives easier.
Once you submit everything they ask for in the format they ask for it in, you can wait for as long as a year to hear back from them. If they don't want your book, most publishers will never contact you again. If they do want it, they'll ask for the entire manuscript, give it a read, and then tell you if they want to publish it.
Needless to say, it's a rigorous process. It's like applying to colleges but with a book.
I've sent my first novel to about 20 publishers and have heard back from five. Most of them read my entire book and didn't want it, saying it didn't fit what they were looking for, or that it wasn't their style of writing. Some of them even gave me free editing which is FANTASTIC for me because I have no money to pay for someone to edit my book.
It's disheartening though to hear that people don't see the potential in your book that you see. I stopped sending it to publishers all together for a little while because the rejection became too much.
Then the other day, a publisher who I sent my book to back in January 2018, said they wanted to see my entire book so I sent it. I'm still waiting on whether or not they want to follow through and publish it.
The point is, if you have a book that you want to share with everyone, it is possible for you to become published. You're going to be rejected a million times before you get a yes, but it's that determination that will carry you through in the end.
