12/25/2022 0 Comments Peru mypublisher![]() ![]() I sent the publisher an email expressing my concerns and he requested a phone call. It seemed to me that she was trying to establish herself, and part of that meant cleaning house and tearing down everything that had been built to that point.įrom a business perspective, that strategy didn’t make any sense. However, it turned out that all the subsequent manuscripts of the original writers had been rejected by the new editor. A couple of the early books had sold really well. We’d been developing momentum and felt we had a good thing going. My fellow authors and I were all disappointed. Cleaning houseĪfter giving myself a few days to think the situation over, I thought I’d figured out what had happened. I decided to do some research and write to the publisher directly. There were pages and pages of similar ludicrous comments. “The only people who would deny something like that are those entitled, rich jerks who never really lived in the country.” I showed the comment to my wife, who is also from Peru, and she snorted. “My assistant editor is from Peru and she says this isn’t true,” the editor wrote. This is because when their children get married, they build on top of the existing house and live there with their parents. For example, in the book I mention how many of the people in Peru have rebar sticking out of the top of their houses. I don’t mind being rejected, but it irks me when I’m rejected for nonsensical reasons. A few weeks later I got a lengthy rejection letter. If they were complaining about this editor, there must be a problem. I knew the other authors who worked for the publisher were professionals. The editing process isn’t always pleasant, but there’s no reason it can’t be courteous. We’d formed a very close community and supported each other.Īt the time, I’d already been working as a writer long enough to develop a thick skin. As I finished working on my book, I received a few emails from some of the other authors at the publisher. The new editor had a master’s degree, but I didn’t recognize any of the books she’d worked on. They got a new logo, redid the web page, and hired a new chief editor. They’d had a little influx of money, so they were in the middle of a makeover. Big changesĪs I was writing the Peru book, there were some changes going on with the publisher. I didn’t think it’d sell a billion copies, but I felt it had a very good chance of speaking profoundly to at least a few of the people who happened to pick it up. When I finished, I knew I’d completed a very solid novel. I set to work on another work of biographical fiction, this time dealing with the 10 years I spent living in Peru. With the success of Birkie, I felt confident the publisher would be open to my next effort. If the work is going to stand any chance, it has to actually be good. You can’t rely on browbeating people into being afraid to admit it’s not great. There’s no muscling your book onto shelves at the expense of everyone else. ![]() You, the author, basically have to do all of the promotion yourself. The problem with partnering with a small publisher is that there is almost no marketing budget. ![]() To this day people write to tell me they read it once a year. Beyond Birkie Fever was released in 2010 and hit the ground running. This is not the type of book that you write to get rich, but I knew that there was a small group of very passionate people who would be interested in the topic. The second book I did for them was a work of biographical fiction about the years I spent as a cross-country skier. ![]() Fortunately my publisher insisted that the best way to promote your first book was to write a second. The book got positive reviews but didn’t really take off. The first book that this publisher had done of mine had been a kind of paint by numbers fantasy. I like being able to sit down with a coffee with the guy who owns the company and fret about how to keep the place in business. The truth is that I like the small publishers. I’ve taken a few halfhearted swings at the big leagues, but nothing more than a few email submissions to agents and other people with supposed connections. I’ve always worked with small publishers. Imagine my surprise when they rejected it. I felt confident that this was the best manuscript I’d yet turned in. I’d had a good relationship with the publisher having done two books with them already. It’s a sobering moment to have a scowling mercenary wearing a mismatched uniform jab you in the stomach with the barrel of an AK-47. I was traveling from Peru to Ecuador when the bus stopped in the jungle and soldiers with machine guns came on board and told all the men to get off. This was back in the days when I was a reckless kid in my 20s. The manuscript started with the true account of the time I was hauled off a tour bus at gunpoint.
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