Book-marking Success

Reporting on In Stereo Where Available
by Becky Anderson

It's time once again to send along one of my notes about "you too can go from being a struggling unpublished tortured wannabe novelist to #98,000 on Amazon in just three years!"

By now most people on this list know the delightful story about how I wanted to be a literary novelist so I wrote a charming, funny, and highly marketable chick-lit novel to get my foot in the door of the business, then busted my ass for the next two years collecting rejection letter after rejection letter trying to make my dreams come true, until finally Prince Charming came along in the form of Medallion Press and allowed me to cram my foot into their glass slipper.

So. Most recently I endured a grueling five-week delay of my release date due to a cover-printing error. The first ten days post-release were very slow going, as I watched my Amazon number spiral downward (after all the pre-orders my friends and fellow IWW members were fantabulous enough to place were filled), wondered if it would ever appear in Borders, etc. I kept telling myself these problems were like Tevye's son-in law in Fiddler on the Roof telling him about the problems of having wealth, and him yelling at the sky, "May God smite me with it! And may I never recover!"

Then, last night, I went out to the Borders here in my hometown of Bowie, Maryland and-- miracle of miracles -- there I was on the shelf! Two copies of my book right there between two other people's books, just like I was a regular writer or something! I almost cried. The only reason I didn't was so I wouldn't look like an idiot when I took the copies over to the customer service desk and asked the manager if he wanted me to sign them (which he did). Before I took them off the shelf I took a picture of the shelf with my cellphone. That was absolutely the best moment, better even than when I got the contract or the advance or the author copies. My book was actually on a shelf at Borders.

I remember all the times I went into Borders before I sold the book, and I felt so depressed I could hardly bear it, looking at all those books (most nowhere near as good as mine, of course) from all those people who'd "made it." Why wasn't I there too? I could really hardly stand it. I'm sorry to sound like a drama queen, but I had so much ambition and as a result, so much envy. So -- remembering that so vividly -- it was an amazing moment to see my own work there as part of the crowd. I felt free to browse and not feel like crap anymore -- except of course I had work to do.

There have also been other fun moments, like when I got a surprise review from Library Journal that was highly positive -- it was almost funny, like, How does this librarian I've never heard of out in Wisconsin know the whole plot of my book?! Logically I know my publisher sent out ARCs and all that, but I worked on this in a solitary way for so long that reading reviews is a little creepy, like people are reading my mind. And when I logged onto Borders' beta site today and saw that my book is now in stock not only in Bowie (as it was for several days), but in nine other Borders stores around the state. It's still "being a writer" on a very small scale at the moment, but at the same time, it's hard to wrap my mind around the idea that my work is now all over the place and for all I know could show up under someone's Christmas tree or on an airplane or wherever. All I did was think up this story and I don't quite know how it developed legs and walked off on me.

So while I realize this email could be depressing to the as-yet-unpublished, it's meant to be the opposite. Many of you knew me on Novels and have watched me work hard for this over the past three years. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's just hard, uncompromising work. It's wonderful work, but it's work for sure. In terms of getting published, half of it is craft and half of it is keeping your mind in the right place -- not whining over how unfair the system is or becoming a self-esteem diva and claiming that you suck. There's not a lot of luck involved in getting published -- it's just in finding the right channels. Some people are "lucky" in that they find the right channel sooner than someone else, but the channels are all there for whoever wants to take them.

A whole lot of it is networking, and that being said, you're in the right place, and I wish you all the best in achieving your goals in writing in the coming year!

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Becky's Rejection Slip Bookmark!
"I am offering this collector's item as an inspiration to the thousands of writers who write perfectly wonderful and amazing literature that is rejected over and over again by agencies who open letters under the assumption that your work is crap. Agent and agency names will be removed, but their personal notes of discouragement and jaded disinterest are 100% authentic!"