I’ve heard authors gripe about the fact that they aren’t published when others are. Something along the lines of, “I’m such a better author than so and so, I can’t believe they’ve been published when I haven’t.” Maybe you’ve heard it too, or maybe you’re the one that’s done the griping (no judgement from me!) It’s understandable why this view is expressed, writing is hard work and when it doesn’t pay off the way we want it to… it’s frustrating.

But while I can see that there are valid reasons why some feel this way, it doesn’t validate the claim. The more I work in the world of publishing, the more I see how random and crazy that world is.

For example:

I was asked to review a novel that our Editor-in-Chief had read the manuscript for. She’d loved it so much that she immediately offered a contract to the author. So I went into this novel expecting quite a bit, I mean, an automatic acceptance, after only being read by one person is pretty unheard of where I work–at least so far as I can tell.

But let me tell you. I just absolutely hated this book.

Each page was even poorer than the last and by the time I finished the novel I was shocked that we’d offered the author a contract. The exposition, the dialogue, the characters, every aspect seemed lacking, so how on earth could we have offered to publish this?

Well, it’s really very simple. There was a caveat here. We had already published a previous novel for this author, so there was already a relationship there.

Regardless, I wrote out a review of the novel that was, to put it mildly, scathing. I ripped apart each aspect of the novel I’d hated to the point to where by the time I got done with it, I actually felt bad. I hadn’t been rude or confrontational, I’d just clearly (though passionately) stated why the novel didn’t work the way it was written.

A few days later our EIC thanked me for the feedback. She’d said that it was incredibly helpful and that they were working with the author to make a lot of changes related to what I’d said. And the novel was, eventually, published.

What’s the moral of this story? Well, the only reason the novel was accepted was because the author had already been published through us. What that tells us is that the author was clever. Whether or not she knew the about the weaknesses I saw in her manuscript, I don’t know. But the fact that she didn’t lead with it does say something. She lead with her best work (which I assume to be the case though I haven’t read it), and submitted other work to us later after she’d already built a publishing relationship–and as such, we were more willing to work with her as we already had that relationship. Very smart.

On top of this, if the author knew that the second novel wasn’t as strong, she let the relationship with the publisher provide her access to our editing staff. In turn, the novel that was extremely weak when I read it, was improved then published at a much higher caliber.

What’s the moral of this story?

Well, it is tangential, but my purpose is to say that getting published has more to do with “being the better author”. It incorporates business sense, networking, having a following. Don’t get caught up in not seeing success, focus on improving yourself–which seems like obvious advice to give, but it’s remarkable how often people need to hear it.

I finished The Once and Future King some time ago, and I’m taking a short break before I start, The Queen of Air and Darkness. While I enjoyed it and I think White has a delightful writing style, it’s not something I can just read through all at once.

In the meantime, I’ve picked up Stormdancer which I’m very much enjoying (at least as far as I am three chapters in). Steampunk is an inherent weakness of mine (in that I can’t stay away from it) and one based in a feudal japan setting? I’m all about that. I’ll write up more about what I think later.

Penumbra has been… not stalled necessarily, but slow the last two weeks. I’ve been really struggling with making an aspect of part II work. I’m still not sure how it is going to be compiled, but I’ve resolved enough of the issues that I’m plugging back along and making steady progress again. I hate getting stalled like that (though I wouldn’t call it writer’s block, which I’ll discuss in a later post.) I’m just glad to be moving forward!

Jay Kristoff, author of Stormdancer’s website: https://jaykristoff.com/