I got a not rejection letter. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but it’s not a bad thing. A literary agent in San Fransico responded to my query by requesting my full manuscript and a 2 page synopsis. It may not end up in anything, but it’s not a rejection letter. 🙂 There was a little smiley face next to the request for the manuscript, and at the end they wrote in their own handwriting “Thanks”. Not “No Thanks”, they said “Thanks”. Someone out there doesn’t think I suck. I am stoked. 🙂
Pray that it turns out to be something.
Congrats Lauren.
Make sure you talk to your dad about some of the copyright stuff before you send the manuscript out. Take every possible precaution. Even just putting Copyright Lauren Catlin 2005 on the cover gives you some legal options if these people aren’t on the up and up.
WOOHOO!!! Just remember that even some of the books we consider classics had a hard time getting published. *tries to find the example I just recently came across* Here’s a cute little anecdote I stumbled across while trying to jog my brain for an example.
“The finished manuscript of “The Hobbit” fell into the hands of George Allen and Unwin, Publishers. Unwin paid his ten year old son a shilling to read the story and report on its publishability. The young man lavished praise on the book, and Unwin decided to take a risk on it.”
So, there you have it. You need to find their children and bribe them. 😉
Seriously though, I can’t remember which author I just looked up recently that almost didn’t get published. Trying desperately using Google, I did find this rather encouraging though…
“L’Engle initially had tremendous difficulty publishing this novel [A Wrinkle in Time] because publishers could not identify a market for it among either children or adults. L’Engle insisted that she wrote for people, because “people read books.” For two years, she received rejection after rejection, a frustrating process she describes at length in her autobiography A Circle of Quiet (1972). Finally, in 1962, John Farrar of Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux agreed to publish the book even though he did not expect it to sell. To the surprise of the publishing world, the book was wildly successful. It was awarded the 1963 Newbery Medal and has now been translated into over 15 languages. L’Engle later wrote a whole series about the Murry family called the Time Fantasy series, including A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1996).”
However, until you become wildly successful and make the publishers that rejected you quit their jobs out of shame, I’ll be praying for you!
Wow…
It will be great to get more detailed professional feedback in any case. Hopefully you get rich. Don’t forget to tithe!
😉
j
🙂
That’s so great! I will pray that it turns into something big…
oops
forgot to log in…that was me.