Last week I queried about the status of Kingdom of the Dead. The publisher requires full manuscripts and my novel has been out over 170 days. I probably should have waited until the 180 day mark, but I had convinced myself that they never got my submission for the reasons in this post from a few weeks ago. They got my submission and have “set it to the side for further consideration” which kind of had me excited. I have crossed my fingers every time I’ve checked my email since then. I hope my query didn’t annoy them.
After that I went to another publisher’s website. I had sent my novel, The Lion of Solkara to them. It was forty days over their estimated response time. I started to think that maybe this publisher had also “set it to the side for further consideration”. So I went to their website to find an email address. And I discovered something.
They had added an extra six months to their estimated response times.
That’s right 6 months. 180 days. 4320 Hours. 259,200 minutes.
I get it that publishers are inundated with manuscripts. But I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed. I HATE waiting. For me it is worse than the rejections. When I get a rejection, I can go back and revise a story, or I can get all upset and eat some yummy delicious fruit snacks and forget my problems. But with waiting, the only thing you can do is…well wait.
I was so upset that I skipped my writing time last night and started reading The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. It is the sequel to Name of the Wind, and I have to say there is a good reason it hit #1 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. It is really good, which actually didn’t help with my annoyance because I started to compare my writing to Mr. Rothfuss.
I went to bed feeling frustrated and inadequate, it was like I was a character in a bad teen movie. You know the ones where the nerdy guys make a pact to lose their virginity by the end of the summer? It was just like that…sort of.
Except, instead of girls I am talking about publishing and hopefully there won’t be any comical misunderstandings between me and the most popular publishing company in school, which totally embarrasses me but makes a less popular but just as pretty publisher(who was staring me right in the face the whole time) see me in a new light.
And I probably won’t learn any life lessons about how I should view publishers with more respect and I shouldn’t just use them for a quick contract. Oh, and I am not planning on having a big keg party at the end of the summer so that me and all my friends can get big publishing deals…
Okay so it really isn’t the same at all, but you get the point.
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