And the Clock Has Started..Stopped?..Paused?

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Happy Earth Day, everyone! Welcome back to my weekly blog. I trust  you all had a wonderful Easter.

As is the case in writing, you win some, you lose some. More often than not, you end up on the losing end. And that is the case with my manuscript, “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”.

            I’ve moaned about this before but for those of you not familiar with the wonderful, wacky world of writing, unless you are an established author in a genre, the process for getting a book published begins with a proposal.

            Now, I have written eight outdoor recreation guides for Falcon Books so I no longer go through that process. The editor asks, “what book do you want to write this time?” and poof, a new guidebook begins.

But I am trying to move on to other genres – short stories and non-fiction historical books. Changing genres is a different beast and proposals to publishers when making this move is a double edge sword. You work hard on a proposal, mapping out every detail of the book – the goal, the overview, each chapter, the target audience, marketing plans, you name it. Then send it off to a publisher.

            The general rule is, do not send simultaneous submissions. What that means is, don’t send proposals to publisher “A” and publisher “B” at the same time. There are some publishers that don’t follow that rule and don’t care, but most do. They want to know that they have first dibs at that new bestselling hit.

            That poses a problem for writers. It leaves you sitting on a manuscript possibly for months until you get a response, if you even get one at all. When you do, or when you give it an ample amount of time to sit on an acquisition editor’s desk, you start the process all over again with the next publisher. There is a lot of wasted time between submissions as you wait it out.

            I had the manuscript for Everyone’s Gone to the Moon completed one year ago. It is the tale of what was happening on Earth during the month of July 1969, that historic month when mankind first voyaged to a different world.

Many people say that the world stopped when Apollo 11 made its journey. Well, for a brief moment it did as Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. But for the most part, it kept spinning. Wars waged on, the Civil Rights movement was intensifying, and families were having a tough time making ends meet. But there were so many other fascinating stories that have been forgotten that I felt needed to be told and that’s what the book was about.

The book follows the month of July 1969 week-by-week with each week being divided into three separate sections: the news and current events that were occurring that week, additional space news beyond Apollo 11, and the pop-culture that was shaping a generation.

So, I sent it to a publisher and waited. Three months later, they replied that they wanted it but couldn’t fit it into their catalog this year and next year would be too late for the Apollo 11 anniversary.

I sent it to a second publisher. They loved the idea and contracts were made ready. And I waited. Three months later, the publisher changed their business plan, dropping out of the print model and now they only offer eBooks. To top it off, authors would have to pay to have their work generated as an eBook.

I sent it to a third publisher, a university publisher, and waited. That was three months ago. Just this week I received a glowing email from the head man. He was extremely excited about the manuscript, couldn’t say enough about it, but…

The book is intended for general audiences, not scholarly types, and while he really wanted to run with it, it would take a tremendous amount of effort to get the people who review books to be included in a university’s catalog - all of whom are historians – to look at it as a general audience book and not as a scholarly publication. He did give me the name of another publisher who may be interested.

Undaunted, I sent the proposal back out again to the publisher the university press recommended but, sadly, there is no way the book can come out in time for the Apollo 11 anniversary. With luck, it will still be released as a general non-fiction historical book, just not in time for July 2019.

BUT, having said all of that and in spite of all of the shenanigans of the publishing world, I’ve decided that I will treat all of you to the book and will be releasing portions of it in serial form beginning July 3^rd right here on my blog.

I’ll have all of the details for you in an upcoming blog entry. Stay tuned!