I'd like to tell you a story....

Danpad

....if I may?
An update is the least I could give you considering the feeback I received from this forum.

Some time ago I emabrked upon my first novel - Ghost Estate, it was called. I was thrilled when I typed the last word. I'd completed the marathon and slumped, exhausted, over my laptop before entering the realm of a zillion drafts. During the revision process, a board member - Pickarooney - helped me (understatement of the year sirens are now going off all around me).

I submitted it to Authonomy, where likeminded writers lurk in the hope of catching the eye of a kerb crawling publisher. Multiple reviews, comments, drafts and periods of self doubt filled craziness later I fired it off to a carefully selected herd of agents.

Remember scoring in the nightclub? Grabbing your coat cos you'd pulled and giving your friends the nod and the wink, knowing they understood the code? Well that's how I felt upon receiving a request for further chapters from one of the agents. Now imagine my delight when they asked (of their own accord) for the full MS. Well, it was like the girl (half Spanish-half Brazillian - gymnast and Lara Croft impersonator) from the club telling me she actually owned the hotel we were going back to.

Beaming from ear to ear, literally, (I had my millions spent and was deciding whether I'd go with the Ferrari or Lambo) I anticipated what my next step to world fame would be...and waited...and waited...and waited.
It was torture. With each passing day the shiny paint on the Lambo in my dreams faded, yeah I went with the Lambo, the Ferraris are a bit common.

Weeks later I decided to contact the agent. They responded within 24hrs...with a short, sharp but very definite NO. That same day they must have suffered a microscopic crack in their granite heart as they mailed me once more...
..."You should check this link out," the message read.

I did check it out. The lights on the Lambo blinked on and then off again in winking fashion whilst the bonnet shape-shifted itself into a wry grin.
The agent had assembled a collection of published titles which were, plot wise, very close to mine and was 'kindofsortofinaroundaboutway' telling me...well...telling me that I'd obviously been too drunk to notice that the senorita I'd nabbed had been around the block a few times before.

Heartbroken, but determined, I'm mulling over my next novel which will no doubt, propel me, supernova like, onto the best seller list.

And next time I'll go for the Ferrari.
Pickarooney, thankyou, again. Your helpfulness alone is inspirational.

Nick

[-0-]

Why not just publish with Amazon electronically?

Antilles

Eh, Danpad you've got one rejection, and that rejection followed on from an expression of interest from an agent. You'd be crazy to give up on the project after that.

You should definitely send it out some more. They wouldn't have expressed interest if there wasn't something to it, and if their only criticism of the whole book was that it was similar to other, existing works, then so what? That just means that there's a market for it that another publisher might be willing to try for.

echo beach

Antilles wrote: »

You should definitely send it out some more. They wouldn't have expressed interest if there wasn't something to it, and if their only criticism of the whole book was that it was similar to other, existing works, then so what? That just means that there's a market for it that another publisher might be willing to try for.

There are hundreds, indeed thousands of books, on the same topics. Some say there are only seven plots in the entire world and everything is a variation of one of them.
Have you read any of the other titles? Can you say , hand on heart, that your book is as good as at least one of them?

There are two attitudes to take when you look around a bookshop. One is 'There are so many books out there, why would anybody want to read mine?' The other is 'All these people are getting published and most of them are total rubbish so somebody must want to read my book.'

Danpad

I hear you guys, the novel is still with other agents. I have read some of the other books since they were pointed out to me and in at least two the plots are painstakingly similar to mine. I don't harbour any ambitions about becoming famous or successful for writing, so I'm prepared to leave Ghost Estate (now called The Call) with the agents and let it take as long as it takes. My biggest bug bear is that there are several pieces of work already published that are just a little too close for comfort and now they're on my radar. Corny as this sounds I write first and foremost for my two kids. I want them to see that the old man wasn't just slouched in front of the T.V whilst they were growing up.