Traditional publishing part II (learning the rules)

So, I needed to research my market and learn the unspoken rules. I chose Love Inspired Historical, which is an imprint of Harlequin and joined their book club. Yep, I get four books a month and read them all whether I like them or not. It's kind of like broccoli, I guess. I rate most of the ones I have finished, so if you ever get curious you can click on my Goodreads account and see them. Also, if you ever clicked on my Goodreads account and wondered why I am always reading romance novels, that is the reason. I actually prefer classics, sci-fi/fantasy, and postmodern books.

After reading many LIH (the abbreviation for said imprint), I discovered the Harlequin social network. I knew about it before December, but I really did not want to add another social network to my list of things to do. Still, it is one of those unspoken requirements that will give you a plus. So, I joined. The first week of December was great, they had an open house with a lot of giveaways and I even won two! Plus they have aspiring writer boards where you all encourage each other to finish your novel. After checking all the requirements and making sure I met them, last Monday, I hit send and submitted it electronically.

Now, writing 70,000 words is not a walk in the park. With all my other duties, it took 6 months. Then I had two beta readers look at it, and since I have decided I cannot write a query letter to save my life I hired someone to critique mine (she just rewrote it because it was that bad and referred me to websites with query samples on them). Yes, I have read other people's queries that were accepted and done my best to model mine after them, but I fall flat on my face. Instead of empowered and excited, they read like a whiney idiot wrote them. I can write a story in the style of any author you give me, but ask me to write a query letter after one of the hundreds I have read and my head flies out the door. I think somehow it gets screwed up because I am writing from my personal point of view and not someone else's.

So after making sure all my p's and q's were straight, I sent it, hoping there were not too many typos. Like a self-published piece, you should have as many people edit and look at it as you can afford and find. I could find two free beta readers that I was able to afford.

Traditional publishing part I (introduction)

In college during the early 90's I was taking a creative writing class. I was doing well in it, but half-way through I unofficially dropped out to marry my husband, vowing to never return. Then I did return a few years ago (yeah, that's how you know you have undiagnosed ADHD). Happily, my ADHD was diagnosed and now I have two Bachelors degrees (another side effect of ADHD).

Around the time my second son was born, I did decide that I had enough writing under my belt to make a go at a writing career. I unwisely chose children's picture books to write. I also wrote some other things and collected a nice stack of rejection letters that is filling a 3-ring binder in my garage.

At first, I refused to give up, priding myself that I had been rejected by some of the same publishing companies/publications that James Whitcomb Riley had been rejected from. I mostly got "nice" rejection letters, so I was even encouraged. But for whatever reason, I could never break the code. I didn't know what was wrong with my books. Eventually, I gave up writing children's stories to help my husband write his epic. That became my focus and the children's stories just took up space on one of my floppies.

As my husband's book approached completion, I realized: (1) it was huge - we either needed an agent or to self publish and (2) my writing skills needed more refinement to market something like that. I went back to college and got said degrees, taking 3 more writing courses to round them out. Yeah, I could have applied for minors in both creative writing and history as well, but at that point I really was done with jumping through undergraduate hoops.

Thus armed, I bravely wrote my next two query letters. One for my husband's book (never heard back) and one for my children's book (yep, rejected, again). Then, I set out to self publish the children's book to prove it was worthy. If you have been following this blog, you should know I finally have it formatted for print (paperback) but now I need to format it for kindle - its close but just not there. I also want to translate it into a language or two and then begin marketing it. Without marketing, you are dead in the water if you plan to self-publish for money as opposed to vanity.

Marketing costs either time (which I don't have since I still need to earn money freelancing) or money (which I don't have or I wouldn't be freelancing as much as I do). So, I decided to cave in and try to sell a romance novel the traditional publication way. Unlike children's books, romance novels are one of the most marketable books to put out. If you want to break into publishing, Romance is the easiest way to do it - which doesn't mean its easy, just easier than trying to get an unillustrated children's book to sell. But, traditional publishing is a little different that self-publishing and a lot more like freelancing.

When you self-publish, you can write whatever you want, however you want, and you don't have to follow any rules. You just need to know how to format it for kindle/createspace or whatever your publishing platform. When you freelance, you have to follow all the rules of the person that hires you. Whether I am editing, writing, or doing other odd jobs, I have to remember how each employer likes their work done and do it. Unlike freelancing, a traditional publisher is only going to give you a minimal list of rules to follow (most related to formatting) but if you do not know the unspoken rules, your manuscript won't get accepted. To find out the unspoken rules, you have to read what that publisher is putting out.

Holiday Break

Sorry, I took time off over the holiday because I wanted to finish my romance novel. It seems like I didn't have time to do anything this Christmas and our tree is still up! In our house, the tree comes down the day after Christmas (traditionally), but I suppose since I am still baking the Christmas cookies and truffles (the chocolates not the mushrooms) I promised my kids, I can still have the tree up.

I have been diligently writing, and believe it or not after insulting me several more times the guy I edited the screenplay for paid in full (I stopped communicating with him several weeks ago, but he keeps sending me a nasty letter every now and again telling me how he is going to ruin my career). Since he doesn't seem to have a foot in the romance industry I am not worried about his threats at the moment.

I did finish my romance: The Inconvenient Widow. Thus begins my trek back into traditional publishing. I will submit it tonight. I think I will talk about query letters and the submission process in my next post at the end of the week, but then I will get back into some of the interesting side jobs I have done.

Hope everyone had a good holiday season!