RWA Day One - Rejections
The first day of the conference is always a short one. After a morning of chatting, mingling and workshop attending, the scheduled activities end until morning. Notice I did not mention the lunch. It sucked as all conferences lunches do. The speaker, Debbie Macomber, was inspirational. Her story of skating on the edge of poverty for 5 years as she pursued a writing career is very interesting. Having 60 million books in print ain’t too shabby either.
With respect to Macomber, the most enlightening comments came in workshops on the issue of rejection. See, having now sold I now live in fear of never selling again. Yeah, heaven forbid I not have something to obsess and worry about every freaking minute of every freaking day.
Jayne Ann Krentz, a personal fav and NYT bestselling author, gave a lecture called Reinventing Yourself. She talked about the 3 times in her career where she’s had to either adapt to the market or change the marketing style of her book due to a change in her writing. During the speech, she mentioned that she had a book rejected recently. Yeah, Krentz got rejected in 2005. With her track record, this didn’t seem possible but she said it. After an initial panic - you know, something along the lines of if publishers aren’t buying a bestseller why the hell will they buy me - I realized this was a good lesson. No one is immune. The concern will always hover around the edges. The goal is to not let that panic overwhelm the writing.
Lucy Monroe - who is absolutely charming - also talked about rejection. She has 11 releases this year. She talked about how Kate Duffy at Brava wasn’t excited about some of the work and let it go. Berkley picked it up. Monroe’s point was that she admired Kate’s honesty and decision because the rejection let Monroe place her other books with an editor who was excited about those works. This proves that Monroe is a better and stronger woman than I am, but also shows that there are other options out there if Kate wakes up some morning and decides buying my work was a mistake. Another good lesson. One I’m hoping not to have to deal with, but still good.
July 28th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
Wow — that is surprising. But the more I think about it, I’m also glad. For someone like JAK, who must be on the auto-buy list of thousands of readers, to be rejected means that any cries of “they’ll publish anything to get the money!” are untrue. Sure, not everything published (okay, many things published) are not really, really good, but it shows that the publisher still has to care about the project to push it from proposal to the shelves. It’s not just the bottom line; quality matters, too. If it didn’t, they’d slap the JAK name on whatever she wanted to put out, and make their gazillion bucks doing it.
July 28th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
Thanks for the interesting report, HelenKay.
July 29th, 2005 at 8:21 am
Debbie Macomber’s still writing? Wow, I haven’t read anything of hers in years. The last time I read one of her books, Silhouette Special Desire covers had cartoons depicting the characters.
July 29th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Thing is, with good authors coming up through the ranks, if the older authors are basically rehashing their old successes, the publishers may want to shake things up a bit.
July 30th, 2005 at 1:12 am
You’re welcome, Jorie. The JAK rejection was a shock. I can only imagine how she felt.
Walt - I agree but I tend to think some folks get by on their reputations long after their writing ceases to be fresh and exciting. The really strange thing, and this goes to Meljean’s point, is that JAK got rejected in the same year she was named as Borders/Waldenbooks best historical seller of the year. Clearly people are sill buying her. I have to wonder if there has been an editor change and the new person isn’t as devoted, regardless of JAK’s numbers. Don’t know the answer but it is interesting to ponder.
Karen - DM is defintely writing. she has a series of women’s fiction having to do with women who meet in a knitting club. Not my thing but someone must be buying since it’s coming out in hardcover first.