In another week I'm going on vacation and I'm taking both work books and fun books with me. I decided my trip-out plane book will be The Grip of It, which I really should've read last winter when duncan recommended it, but now it's finally on my coffee table. Can't wait.
Today I want to tell you a story. I constructed it with fictional names and titles to make it clear, but still anonymous.
A couple years ago, I met a woman named Melanie at a writing workshop. She seemed to have connections to a variety of people in the upper levels of indie publishing: not the no-budget, hand-stitched-spine, garage publishers (whom I LOVE, for the record - check out Porkbelly Press!), but the prizewinning, "best-of"-lists-placing, actually-getting-paid publishers. Graywolf, Copper Canyon, presses like that.
At the end of last year I found out Melanie's debut novel was getting published by one of those upper-level small presses. Let's pretend it was called Cellardoor Press. I asked her to ask her press to send me an ARC, but for whatever reason I didn't get on that list. About a month before her book was due to come out, this spring, I emailed Cellardoor and asked for an ARC. Cellardoor's chief editor, Stephanie, wrote me back, saying that they were out of paper ARCs but attached was an electronic one. I really wanted to review the book, which was fairly short, so I took the file to Kinko's, printed the book, read it, and placed a review of it at an outlet where I thought I'd hit a sweet spot for the reading audience. I wrote a thoughtful, positive review and, once it was published, sent it off to Stephanie for her perusal and promotion.
Stephanie wrote me the loveliest email after she read the review. She said so rarely does she read reviews where she feels like the reviewer felt the same way about the book as she did, like the reviewer got what she was trying to do in publishing the book, and this was one of them. She said she was so grateful, and that from now on I'm on her "standing reviewers" list for ARCs. Aww. I was really grateful too, and pleased that I'd gotten it. (Melanie promoted the review, too, but she never mentioned it to me directly, by email or message, so I don't know what's up with that. Coupled with the ARC thing, I figure maybe she just doesn't like me.)
 |
| not everyone likes me and I don't really care |
Cut to early June. A book is coming out this fall from Cellardoor that's really unusual. It stirred me, and I find myself continuing to think about it even having read a couple dozen books in between. I pitched it for review to a dozen different outlets and got no bites, so I started thinking about what other book I could pair it with to write a combined review (or not quite a review but a hey-check-these-books-out), in the hope that such an approach would be more appealing. The book I eventually chose for the pairing is pretty odd: one book is a novel, the other is a sprawling historical biography; they are set in completely different times and places; the protagonists couldn't be more different. But there is a connection.
I pitched this idea to a place that is a big reach for me. To my surprise, I got a reply from an editor, Benny, who said he'd like to see a draft. So I sent him a draft. (I've been on tenterhooks about this for three weeks. Big reach. If I land it it'll be a huge deal for me.) Benny happens to be a friend of Stephanie's. I had already pitched him a straight review of the Cellardoor book and he said no, so it wasn't like the connection was automatically working for me.
Today I emailed Stephanie about an interview I wanted to do with one of her authors, and I let her know the status of this combo piece pitch. (Publicists/editors like to know this kind of thing, I've learned, even if the pitch falls through. I did the same for a negativeish piece I'm preparing on a forthcoming biography, and despite the awkwardness of confessing my stance against her press's book, the publicist and I had a nice email chat about it. I've got a friend in Texas!) Stephanie emailed back info for the interview and asked if I wanted her to nudge Benny about the piece, since they're friends. I took a moment to breathe and then said that would be great, but not if it was any trouble. She said it was no trouble and that she would. I haven't heard from Benny yet, but it's Friday.
So, what happened here?
First, I reviewed a book to the best of my ability, and by luck and good reading comprehension, it turned out that my review grokked the editor's intentions. Outcome: editor sees me as useful to her press, which means she will help with my work as I help with hers.
Second, I pitched, refusing to give up after a lot of rejections, and then tried a new approach when the old one yielded nothing. And it happens that one of the most critical pitchees has connections with a person whose good favor I previously earned (/got lucky with). Outcome: one pitch out of 15 landed, and landed well.
Third, I put myself in a position to accept help from the good favor person, although I didn't at all expect help. (And I don't feel guilty about accepting it, because reviewing her books positively for no money helps her and me.) Outcome: maybe this one reach-y pitch will do better than 14 others. Because I set myself up for her help.
To tl;dr it even further: be nice and don't give up, and your network might just work itself.
I have another pitching story, regarding a rejection I got today for the best reason ever, and how getting followed by this outlet on Twitter led me to reach out to them, which was 100% the right decision. But it doesn't actually have a tl;dr lesson, it's just a good story. So I'll save it for another time.
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