deadlines and contracts

“I don’t need time; what I need is a deadline.” I think it was Duke Ellington who said that. I might add that I also need a publisher.

I write curriculum nonfiction for Enslow Publishers. These are nonfiction books sold mainly to the school- library and library markets. (They’re the kind of books a kid would take out to do a report or learn about a subject of interest.) Usually, the topics, reading level, and length are decided by the publisher. My first two books with Enslow were written “for hire”, which means they paid me a fee up front and now the publisher owns the copyright. My next three contracts have all had a royalty attached. I don’t know how much the books will make ultimately, but I can guarantee, they aren’t going to make me rich. More importantly getting my fiction published is what would make me happy.

Recently, a  friend of mine asked if my fiction writing was suffering because of my curriculum book projects. It is. But there is something very comfortable about having a contract before I write the book and knowing that what I write is going to get published. Another Marion Dane Bauer quote comes to mind; she said that there is a difference between wanting to write a book and wanting to have written a book. This quote comes to mind a lot when I am playing Spider solitaire instead of writing. But it is an important point. Are you writing for the writing or are you writing for what comes after? I don’t mind doing the work of writing, but I do get frustrated when my work sits on a shelf.

So, how important is it to know that your writing is going to make it out into the world?

Best, Mara

blogs, and facebook, and twitter, oh my!

So in my first post, I mentioned a couple of reasons for starting this blog. The main reason was that I wanted to start a conversation about publishing. (Thank you to everyone who has commented!) The secondary reason was that I wanted to learn the ins and outs of blogging. After all, blogging is a type of publishing.

To this end, Marc (Thank you, Marc) sent me a link to problogger, a blog about blogging. The first post I read was about a medical doctor who traded in his medical career for blogging. More than four-million people go to this guy’s technology website each month. Wow. Yesterday, I had my highest number of views at 28. Better keep my day job.

Marc also told me about blog rolls, which unfortunately are not like caramel rolls. He says, “the reason blogs have really long blogrolls is because quality links will increase your google ranking. Cross-linking helps too…. You should be able to divide your blogroll into sections, like Children’s Publishers, Poetry Publishers, etc. “

Okay…. I can do that… I think…

Please pass on any good publishing links or blogs that you think are valuable and/or would be valuable to others trying to get published. Let’s stick to the publishing theme. I will look forward to checking out your suggestions and passing them on through my blog roll and in my posts.

As always, feel free to offer your thoughts about publishing, or trying to get published, or getting rejected, or trying to get published again, or, hopefully, finding success. Or feel free to offer blogging critique. We’re all in this together.

BTW, School Library Journal is encouraging us to get our Web 2.0 groove on with their “All Together Now, a Web 2.0 Experience” blog. (Just to be clear, Web 2.0 is a philosophy not an upgrade…. blogs, and facebook, and twitter, oh my.)

Waiting

 

On Wednesday, I wrote a picture book. It has been years since I attempted a picture book. I think they are hard to write well. But this one was like picking ripe fruit or seeing the end game in chess. It was right there and the more I wrote the more I knew what came next. I have tried to write picture books in the past and have managed a few that aren’t bad, but they’ve never been quite good enough to break through to the top of the slush. (Rejections with nice comments, but no sales.) I am hoping this one is.

 

Marion Dane Bauer talks about how a picture book is like an iceberg. The story is the part that is showing but you feel the depth underneath. Like all literature, a picture book needs character, setting, story, tension, and a satisfying ending that isn’t predictable. Unlike other literature a picture book also needs room for the artist, active scenes to illustrate, rhythm and repetition that doesn’t make you want to tear our hair out, and it must, above all, appeal to kids. This all needs to be done in around 500 words.

 

Charlotte Zolotow once made a comment that the difference between writing for adults and writing for children was the difference between looking back to childhood and feeling back. I think I felt back to childhood this time and with great hope I have decided to send it out to publishers.

 

I went back through my old rejection letters and picked out the ones in which the editors said nice things and encouraged me to send other manuscripts their way. I made sure those editors were still at those houses. (Some were; some weren’t; many had been promoted. As I said, it has been a while) Then I looked at the respective submission guidelines, wrote my short cover letters, and bravely sealed the envelopes.

 

So now I wait. Of course the best advice when waiting is to pass the time writing. But as someone who once cut the bridge of my nose by dropping a mailbox lid on it, does anyone know other ways to cope with waiting?

 

I also sent my middle grade novel out again. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Slush Piles and Wait Times

Check out Editorial Anonymous, a blog by a children’s book editor. She gives advice about submitting and occasionally just bitches about her slush pile. There is one post in which she and other editors talk about the strange things that have been found in their slush pile and another in which she explains what a 15,000 manuscript slush pile would look like in your kitchen. Thank you Jamie for giving me the heads-up!

A slush pile, for those who are new to publishing, is the pile of unsolicited manuscripts that publishers receive. When I was interning at Milkweed, the slush pile was in a back room area. Interns wrote the date on which the manuscripts were received in large permanent marker and the manuscripts were reviewed basically in that order. (Solicited/agented manuscripts took precedence.) Interns were encouraged to read and comment on the manuscripts for the editors. As I recall, there was a form for intern comments. Milkweed also had a reader come in to initially review their middle-grade novel submissions.

Milkweed’s current guidelines say they do our best to respond to submissions within six months of receipt. I just talked to an editor at Marshall Cavendish who also said they were six months out on responses.

Any thoughts about piles of slush or wait times?

Publishing Green

Check out this article from MinnPost: Green publishing: turning over a new leaf by Amy Goetzman. It’s about how publishers are beginning to use more environmentally friendly (i.e. recycled) paper for their books. Nice! And don’t we all wish we were a big enough name like J.K Rowling and Philip Pullman to demand it. Of course usually the type of paper is a decision that publishers get to make. But I was pleased to see that almost all of Milkweed’s books are printed on 100 percent post-consumer-waste recycled paper. And noted that another MN press, Free Spirit, was also making the effort (and accepting the costs) of planning for a more sustainable future. As a children’s book writer and as a parent, I think it is an effort we all need to make.

And it brings me to another interesting topic: e-books. I remember Brock Cole standing up in front of the Vermont College MFA students, holding up a book, and saying that it could never be replaced. The ease and convenience, the intimacy, the tactile nature of holding a book, the physical act of turning pages would never be replaced by reading an e-book. That was almost ten years ago.

The publishing houses I worked at were more open to the idea. Milkweed Editions published/distributed an e-book on the Arctic Refuge. It was a collection of essays that was developed in seven weeks and sent to congress. One of the e-book advantages was that they could release it quickly. “A traditional trade book takes at least 12 months to produce, even on a fast track schedule,” said Milkweed publisher Emilie Buchwald. “Our only hope of helping the writers in their goal of influencing the current debate, was to use print-on-demand technology.”  (“E-book about Alaska an unusual venture for Milkweed Editions: Essays oppose refuge oil drilling; [METRO Edition] Chris Waddington, Star Tribune. Minneapolis, Minn.: Mar 26, 2001. pg. 06.A)

At one point, Redleaf Press was looking at a subscription model for a web-based platform of written materials. I don’t know what happened with that. And now we have Amazon’s kindle. Does anyone have one of those who would like to comment?

Personally, I think the e-book revolution will start in colleges. Textbooks are too expensive, too heavy, and out of date too quickly. It seems the perfect place to use e-book technology. Save the students backs and wallets and make sure that the information stays up to date. It would be especially great if you could write notes and link to other pertinent information via the e-book device.

So what do you think? Will an e-book eventually replace the paperback? Will it help the environment or will people download pdfs and just print them out? How will it affect publishers? And what about the writer and royalties with electronic publishing? (That last topic may have to be its own post.)

Where Does Your Book Fit?

There is a story of picture book writer and illustrator, Kevin Henkes, going to the Children’s Cooperative Book Center (CCBC) in Madison Wisconsin and asking to see all the picture books published that year. Reportedly, he sorted them by publisher and ranked the top ten publishing houses where he felt his books would fit. He made appointments with people in the houses at the top of his list and went to New York. Then he met with the first person on his list. In the course of their discussion, he was asked why he chose that publishing house and he told his CCBC research story. The editor asked who the second name on his list was. When he told her, she said, “well you’re not going over there.” (This is a rough version of the story and I am sorry if I have messed it up in anyway) But the point is that Henkes did the research and knew where his books would fit.

Recently, a friend of mine had an editor who was considering her manuscript ask her to do a literature review. The questions she was asked were very similar to the questions that many distributors ask publishing houses for sales purposes. They ask for a synopsis of the book and short summaries of each chapter. Then they ask for a list of other published books that are comparable in subject and style and how the new book is different. They also ask for possible markets. The publisher ultimately declined my friend’s manuscript, but my friend said she had gained a lot through doing the literature review including getting the names of other publishing houses where her book might find a home.

Most publishers have submission guidelines that will tell you what kind of books the publishing house publishes and how they want to have manuscripts submitted. Here is a link to Milkweed Editions’ Submission guidelines.

Do you research you publishing house before you send? How do you research them? For published writers, how did you find the editor that loved your manuscript?

All Best,

Mara Miller

Writers Write and Thoughts About Effort

 

I credit my father for always telling me that I was a writer, but I should also credit my mother for always reminding me that writers write.

 

There is a quote that says you need three things to get published: talent, luck, and perseverance or perhaps it is talent, hard work, and perseverance. (I’ll get the real quote from Ann Angel, she uses it in her writing classes. Ann?) It is said, that you can get published as long as you have two of them. I think it may also say that you can even get published with one of them as long as it is not talent alone.

 

I love Trent Reedy’s quote (in the comment section of skill or luck), “the harder I work, the luckier I get.” I think there is a lot of truth in that. Being out there, working hard, persevering, and making contacts are key. And it is something we can control. Personally, I will to admit to procrastinating. Really, whoever invented Spider solitaire is not my friend. (Perhaps, ways to avoid procrastination would be a good topic for another post.)

 

But for now, let’s assume that we are doing the hard work of writing and revising. How much effort do you put into getting published? For my curriculum nonfiction, Enslow contracts with me before the book is written and then the book is written to their specs. I used to work a lot harder at selling my fiction but got discouraged. So, How do you keep your spirits and effort up when you can wallpaper your bathroom with rejection letters?  

Thoughts?

 

All Best,

Mara

 

Ps. For the blog savvy, I mentioned in my first post that I want to learn the ins and out of blogging which implies (correctly) that I don’t really know them. This post, was inspired by a comment of Trent Reedy from my first post. Should I have responded in the comments section of my blog or is this different enough to be its own post? Can someone explain threads and pingbacks?

Luck or Skill?

Dear Friends,

I am starting a blog in part because I want to put “blogger” on my resume, in part because I want to learn the ins and outs and benefits of blogging, but mainly because I have an interest in and a variety of perspectives about publishing and would like to start a conversation.

About me:

I have an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College. As a writer, I have had some success publishing curriculum books but still struggle with getting my fiction published. I have worked as an intern at Milkweed Editions–a nonprofit, literary press in Minnesota, as an editor at Lake Street Publishers–a start up curriculum publisher that never quite started up, and in marketing at Redleaf Press–a publisher of early childhood education materials where I also worked with foreign rights. I currently work part-time as the communications coordinator for the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council–a nonprofit funder of arts activities in the seven-county metropolitan area of MN. I still write and still try to get my work published. I am currently working on a couple of contracted projects for Enslow Publishers.

Now to start the conversation:

My father was very supportive of my writing and often told me I was a writer, especially when I would doubt myself. When we would talk about publishing, he would tell me that getting a book published was mainly luck. I flatly refused to believe this. ”Dad,” I would tell him, “when I write a  book that’s good enough, it will get published.” I believed that getting published was mainly about writing skill. Believing that getting published rested on skill was very hard on the ego when the rejection letters came. But for me, believing it was luck, meant I had very little control and I chose to believe that getting my work published was in my power.

So which is it–luck or skill?

Of course it is both. We all know that.  But is it more luck or more skill? And can we as a community of serious writers who have studied craft, reduce the elements of luck by working together and sharing what we know?

If you are interested in finding out, please join me and comment on this blog. Please always be respectful of editors. They work hard and their job involves a whole lot more than reading a pile of uncontracted manuscripts. Please be respectful of Publishing Houses. Remember, we want to be published by them.

BTW, I was rejected today, so it is a good time to start this blog. No sympathy is needed, but it is always welcome.

All Best,

Mara Miller