My Progress in Finding Representation

Past History

That was an interesting process in itself. At the time, I was working for a publishing house in Boston (G.K. Hall & Co.) that did not publish original fiction, but the publishing business being what it is many of the editors there had worked at several other houses, and went on to work at several more during my seven-year employment at Hall, meaning that I had some contacts in the business. So my first round of submissions went to friends of friends, or anyone to whom I could elicit an introduction from friends of friends. I got a lot of comments from the editors and the one agent I approached this way. Almost unanimously they agreed that Remote Control was well-written and powerful, and unanimously they declined the manuscript. The main reasons they gave were the fact that the protagonist was an unsympathetic character, the narrative style crossed genre boundaries, and the overall tone of the book was too dark.

Next I began sending the manuscript out to publishers whose entries in The Writer's Market suggested that they would be interested. Some of these editors also praised the book, others had no comment, although once again none of them wanted to publish it. For what it's worth, a few of these editors also commented that I wrote the best cover letters they'd ever received.

Finally, after about two years, I gave up in disgust. It was a severe emotional drain to keep sending manuscripts out and waiting for rejections. If someone had said to me that the book was badly written I might have occupied myself in rewriting it, but no one ever suggested that. Besides, I had other things to occupy me, such as travel in Europe, marriage, moving to North Carolina, a career change, and the birth of my children. I put a temporary halt to my efforts.

The Present Day

So I set out to find myself an agent. For my first pass, I searched the World Wide Web for listings of agents and compiled a list of those who sounded legitimate, and whose interests seemed to cover books like mine. My progress so far:

• Aardvark Literary Agents: sent a query letter. They responded that they were interested, but in the meantime, folks on misc.writing warned me that this agency made a practice of referring authors to a specific book doctor. I decided to withdraw my manuscript from consideration.
• Donald Maass Agency: sent a query letter. They responded that they were not interested, but that I should consider buying a book on how to write and market one's novel. As the author of the book was Donald Maass, I decided not to purchase it. I have since heard some good recommendations for the book, but I still don't think I need it.
• The Literary Group International (Frank Weimann, president): sent a query letter. They responded that they were interested, so I sent a manuscript. As it happens, I had occasion to call the agency because they hadn't used my reply card to notify me that they had the manuscript, and they sounded very legitimate, with several people working there, a professional telephone presence, and so on. However, less than a week later I received my manuscript back, with a letter telling me how excited they were by it but recommending I send it to the same book doctor I had been warned about before. The letter went on to sing the praises of this book doctor. I don't like that way of doing business, and besides, I still don't think I need a book doctor.

  (Updated 17Jan97) Several days after receiving my rejection from Frank Weimann, I received a large Priority Mail envelope containing a regular business-sized envelope containing a letter and a color-printed glossy brochure from the book doctor, informing me that they had heard of my manuscript and were eager to offer their services, along with reasonable payment plans that would allow me to break my manuscript up into 100-page chunks for pay-as-you-go review, plus the exciting information that they accept all major credit cards. As usual, when someone tells me they accept my credit cards, the first question I wanted to ask was "But do you give them back?"

• Algonquin Books: not an agent at all, but I heard their editorial director, Shannon Ravenel, speak at Duke on 26Jan97 and sent her my ms on 29Jan97. She says she reads everything that is submitted to them. She also says, and this is one of the things that makes me hopeful that she will want to acquire Remote Control, that she is willing to work with a author, even a first-timer, to polish a manuscript into publishable form. I happen to think the book is good as it stands, but I would be delighted to work with a really good editor to make it better.

  (Updated 03Mar97): Algonquin has rejected the manuscript, on the grounds that they don't know how to market this kind of material effectively. That doesn't leave much room for argument, but it is disappointing. For those of you keeping score, it took almost exactly a month, round trip, for my manuscript to go to Algonquin and come back rejected. That strikes me as being a pretty good turnaround time--not so fast as to make my head spin, but not so slow that I felt like they were unfairly using my time.

  My next step will be to get Jeff Herman's guide and resume sending it out to agents.

• Serpent's Tail: not an agent, either. After reading Jeff Herman's guide I concluded that there are no agents out there looking for the kind of work I write. There might be some willing to represent it if I find a publisher on my own, but no one is actively seeking my kind of writing. On the positive side, however, I did identify a few publishers who seem interested in publishing my kind of writing, so I sent out a query to Serpent's Tail on July 21.

  Update: as of today (May 21, 1998) I still have not heard from Serpent's Tail. I assume this means they weren't interested.

• Fiction Collective 2/Black Ice Books. Also identified from Jeff Herman's book, sent a query on July 30.

  Update: as of today (May 21, 1998) I still have not heard from Black Ice Books. I assume this means they weren't interested.

Some other efforts

So I went up to him after his talk and said "Mr. Colbert, it seems to me that the point of many of your stories is that it's the pushy folks who get published." He agreed. So I said, "Okay, I'm going to get pushy, and it's your own fault. I want you to read my manuscript and tell me whether I should continue trying to get it published as is, do a complete rewrite, and just shelve it and move on." He agreed again, and gave me his address.

So I mailed him the ms, he read some of it (not all, I'm afraid) and opined that the writing was good, but without a rewrite I would probably just go on getting encouraging rejections. This gave me considerable pause to think. Did I really want to get involved in rewriting something I completed a decade ago, and have been happy with on my own terms at least? Finally I decided that I did not. Rather, I am going to continue to look for an editor who will take an interest in the ms as is. If an editor asks me to makes specific changes, or rewrite the book in a specific manner, and the changes make sense to me I will gladly undertake them. But to make speculative changes in the absence of any editorial interest seems to me to be as likely to hurt the book as to help it. I think that my other contact at the NCWN conference helped shape this response.

The other speaker I'm referring to was Peter Guzzardi, Senior Editor at Harmony Books. He was part of a panel on publishing, and during the Q&A session I asked about making speculative rewrites to a book with problems of genre identity, submitting sample chapters from a book whose nature changes radically outside the requested three chapters, and so on. His answers were encouraging, largely because he seemed to know already that there existed good books with these problems, and because he was frank about the very small likelihood that anyone would be interested in the current atmosphere of bottom-line publishing.

So after the session I approached him and quoted my line about pushy people and deciding to become pushy myself. He was amused, so I asked him to dig deep in his knowledge of people in the publishing world and give me the name of an editor who would be likeliest to enjoy a book such as mine.

After some thought he came up with the name of an editor at Avon Books. To make a long story short, I sent him a query letter explaining exactly how I had described the book to Peter and he had recommended this editor, and the editor (now actually considerably promoted from mere editorship) turned me over to the chief science fiction editor at Avon, who in turn rejected my ms because it wasn't science fiction.

Currently (again, as of May 21, 1998) I have no place further to send my ms. I have shelved it until a new idea of how to push it comes to me, and I am concentrating on writing short stories while some problems with my second novel work themselves out in the back of my mind.