I thought publication of my first book, which I titled The Wizard of Winterville, was on the road to publication. I had a well-known agent, and Jerry B. Jenkins had selected my book as a top-ten effort out of over 300 other entries. What could go wrong? In short, everything.
My story was targeted at the adult Christian audience, so I was a candidate only for Christian publishing houses. My proposal went to every single Christian publishing house that handled my genre of material. Every last one of them rejected it.
There were two or three publishers that showed interest before finally rejecting my book. I went back and forth with one editor, making significant requested changes each time until that editor left for another publisher and the new editor decided he didn’t like the project. At another publisher my story was in the final editorial approval meeting where the editor was ready to move forward but a couple of interns said they didn’t think my characters used real-world language, and Boom – my project was rejected on just those remarks.
I’ve given just the tip of the iceberg for a journey that took months to complete, most of it filled with disappointment after frantic work and anticipation. Even for a “good” writer, this is a tough industry.
So why was my work rejected by all those publishers? That’s a topic for my next post.