As I told you earlier, I researched, organized, printed, and put together bunches of book proposal packages to be mailed out… wanting them to arrive as close to those I emailed, so everyone has the same amount of time to look over our stuff.
During this process, I reached out to one of the publishers who had showed interest in the first version of the friendship book — the one in the UK, who had decided not to pursue our project because they had another friendship book scheduled for this year.
I explained that we had revamped the book to encompass various types of relationships and added self-discovery sections to the book. We were resending the book out to other publishers and just wanted to give them an opportunity to look at the new version, in case they were interested and their schedule was open…
They emailed back, immediately, saying that their other relationship book ran into a problem, so they were interested in looking at ours again.
But the editor didn’t like the title of the second version. She thought it was too negative. Both Katherine and I felt it was very positive, and I explained why; but we respected her feedback. A good title is essential to the book and, together, we could come up with a great title….
The editor admitted that she didn’t like the title of the first book either. She felt it was too negative.
O…..K….
At this point, I just left it alone, because I got the feeling that no matter what I came up with, she was going to see the title as being “negative.” I just left it that I’m sure we can come up with a great title when the time comes…
My biggest concern was: What was I going to do with all these mailers that are ready to go out?!!!
Do I throw out all my work and stop the path that we’re on, because this editor didn’t like the revised title or the first title—and who is having “a problem” with another author?
Will this new title actually stop others from reading our proposal and sample chapters?
If we hold up the mailers until we can agree on a new title, how long will that take? And I’ve already sent out a bunch of emailers with the other title….
And all my work in setting the mailers up, in printing will have to be redone. I’m stuck doing the thing that I absolutely hate, Hate, HATE! I’m beginning to feel like that hamster running in its exercise wheel — running and running, but getting nowhere.
GGGGRRRRR!!! I was just so… so… frustrated, that I wanted to scream… but instead, I texted Katherine.
She likes “most” of the title we have. She only wanted to change ONE word in it…
But whether we change one word, five words, or the whole #$@#$ title, I would still have to redo everything and reprint everything. All that time and effort… wasted.
Katherine stopped my downward spiraling by suggesting that we just add a note to each of the mailers, explaining that we were thinking about changing the title of the book, but thought of it after everything was printed. This additional note would prevent us from having to redo everything, and if the publishers didn’t like the title, they would know we’re changing it…. and if they liked the title as is, then no harm done.
Cool!!! So, that’s what we’re doing… along with keeping our fingers crossed.
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