The Next Circle of Hell

{dawn} - WTF on that editor. Ugh, hugs.

Dawn, hee, you already know my thoughts on that! Hang in there!

At least we found out it hadn't been read. Otherwise, we would have thought it was an R from the house. So, despite the setback, it's all good. Just back to square one.

Wow, Dawn. That's. Um. Different.

So sorry! Margarita?

Wow. That's too wild, Dawn.

But you're right--it's all good because your ms hasn't been read and therefore, it's going on to someone that WILL read. Fingers crossed for you!

*clinks martini glass with margarita tumbler*

Hello, Hellions,

Celebrated the hub's birthday yesterday with a breakfast of crepes, a movie, and an awesome shabu-shabu dinner. It was a good (and much needed) break from checking my inbox for my editor's feedback on my revised draft. Today, however, is a new day with a fresh delivery of crickets. Oh well.

suki said:

I've had a smidge of tiny, tentatively positive news - one of the editors wrote agent to say she had read the book and liked it but wanted to read again more carefully. Way too tentatively positive to be exciting yet, as I'm sure these kinds of tentative interest end up in passes all the time, but it was certainly better than a pass.

~suki

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Sounds promising! All appropriate appendages crossed for you!

kellion92 said:

I got to the end of my revision again. I had been thinking it was close to ready, but I ran into some plot and motivation confusion due to my incessant scrambling. I still think it's close to ready to send back to agent, but I better sit on it a little. Plus I wrote a new transition for a revelatory scene today that was workmanlike at best (workmanlike if it got the job done, a disaster if it didn't even do that).

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Yay on revision progress!

dawn miller said:

So, if you were going to get married and quit your job, wouldn't you tell people that before you requested an ms THREE WEEKS ago?

Scratching head over this one. At least we can send it to a different editor within the same house because the other one didn't read it.

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Ugh. *Joins in head scratching*

Dawn - that is odd - but at least you know it's not a pass. So your agent can choose someone else at the house to sub to.

~suki

So weird, Dawn. I hope my ms isn't out with the same person! Yikes!

I've been thinking about the near standstill these days with publishers and how it's been so long since anyone has heard any really good news, not a lot of bad news but publishers seem to be hanging on to manuscripts forever. And while at first I thought it was just the bad economy, lay offs, etc. I have a new theory:

I've been reading so much about all the new e-readers, about how Amazon is selling e-books under cost to get a firm hold on the market and now readers don't want to pay the 'real' price, also about this 'agency model' dealio, even about how some think in the future writers will submit straight to a place like Amazon (which will have its own editors etc. on staff) and bypass the traditional publisher completely. There is just so much going on right now in the publishing business. It's like we're on the cusp of some big changes and no one knows exactly what's going to happen (kinda like when VHS and Beta came out at the same time and no one knew which player to buy until one came out ahead *<--showing my age*). Everyone is just holding his breath and waiting it out. Because I bet they're going to have to rewrite even their standard boiler plate contracts when all is said it done.

So, bad economy + turmoil in the publishing world in general = endless waiting.

Or is this real obvious and I'm just now figuring it out? Or maybe not this at all?

I'm so confused...

Ugh, Dawn. That's weird. And annoying.

Madder - makes sense to me. Because, really, waiting is different from lots and lots of rejections. And it does seem like there have been more crickets than passes lately.

Hopefully things will pick up soon!

Ack! Dawn that doesn't make sense to me either

HC happy belated birthday to the hubs!

Madder your theory makes sense to me. Ugh trust us to be stuck trying to get published in economic turmoil/publishing turmoil. I don't know what will happen, I do know however, that after spending hours staring at a screen, the last thing I personally want to do is curl up with a kindle or whatever, I still prefer my books in print

Dawn - Very odd. Ha, guess this is one time to be glad that editors are so slow to read these days. (I've heard horror stories before of editors leaving right after an author accepts a contract from them. Ack!)

HC - yay for much needed breaks!

Madder, no doubt you are right that the uncertainty in publishing is making editors far more cautious. My agent thinks another major factor is that after all the layoffs, the remaining editors are absolutely buried in work, and so have even less time to deal with subs than before. Which contributes to the "wait and see" mentality...they put off the work of putting together an offer until forced to it by another house making the leap. But darn it, somebody has to be first, or nothing ever happens, argh!

I do have a whole new appreciation for the one editor who always responds to my agent's nudges, even if only to say, "sorry, no further news yet, still waiting on <insert flaming hoop here>." (Editor statistics: of the 6 who currently have my ms, there's the one reliable responder (who deserves a special place in heaven!), two spotty responders (who respond when they have news and ignore all nudges otherwise), and three who have yet to respond in any form whatsoever.)

Tracy, Soul, Blue, my thinking now is that when the good news does hit (and I imagine it will be a fantastic scramble of publishers trying to snatch up all these books they've been sitting on) we'll be able to tell our grandchildren, "Yes, my book was acquired during the great freeze of 2010."

And, Soul, I can't imagine print books vanishing either. Or bookstores. But listening to/reading some of these articles is downright scary. Describing what the publishing biz going through as similar to what happened to music and Napster, stuff like that.

Blue, I agree about the responders. Even if it's a "not there yet", much nicer than nothing. I bet that place in heaven has a cappuccino machine and free biscotti.

Book Expo of America is taking place in NYC this week. I'm aware that the main business of this expo is for agents and publishers to promote the published works of their published authors. But I was wondering if agents also use these fairs as an opportunity to promote their yet-to-be-published authors with the publishers. My agent will be in attendance. I make a point of not making a pest of myself. But he's got three books on the NYT bestsellers lists and I'm afraid these will suck the oxygen out of the room. Does anybody have any insight on the BEA?

Angkor said:

Book Expo of America is taking place in NYC this week. I'm aware that the main business of this expo is for agents and publishers to promote the published works of their published authors. But I was wondering if agents also use these fairs as an opportunity to promote their yet-to-be-published authors with the publishers. My agent will be in attendance. I make a point of not making a pest of myself. But he's got three books on the NYT bestsellers lists and I'm afraid these will suck the oxygen out of the room. Does anybody have any insight on the BEA?

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My agent is meeting to talk about her clients' books, as well as other things, like foreign rights. Since none of us are published, I think it's fair to say, she's trying to sell our books

Angkor-

Yes, I'm with Dawn. My agent is there promoting my ms right now.

soulcascade said:

HC happy belated birthday to the hubs!

Madder your theory makes sense to me. Ugh trust us to be stuck trying to get published in economic turmoil/publishing turmoil. I don't know what will happen, I do know however, that after spending hours staring at a screen, the last thing I personally want to do is curl up with a kindle or whatever, I still prefer my books in print

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Thanks, soul!

I totally agree with you on not being able to curl up with an e-reader. I have, however, converted to the iPad for all my magazine reading. I don't have any emotional attachment to magazines and I'm happy to save some trees. It's a different story with my kiddos, though. They enjoy reading e-books as much as printed books (particularly because of all the interactive features). I'm not bothered by this as long as it fosters their love for reading. I feel a bit sad though that it is very possible that the next generation of readers will not have the same warm and fuzzy feelings that we have about printed books.

bluerose said:

HC - yay for much needed breaks!

I do have a whole new appreciation for the one editor who always responds to my agent's nudges, even if only to say, "sorry, no further news yet, still waiting on <insert flaming hoop here>." (Editor statistics: of the 6 who currently have my ms, there's the one reliable responder (who deserves a special place in heaven!), two spotty responders (who respond when they have news and ignore all nudges otherwise), and three who have yet to respond in any form whatsoever.)

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Thanks, Blue! Good luck with the editor nudges!

I'm a traitor. I read almost everything on my kindle. I do love printed books, but it's an ease of use/access thing for me. My kindle fits tons of books into my bag when I have to spend 6-8 hours on set. I can easily knock out 1 book and start another on long shooting days.

I'm really amazed at how many Kindles I see around (I'm in Venice Los Angeles). I'm sure I'll see a lot of iPads as well. I keep thinking that I'd like to have one to travel -- I've done some long trips with mega-long train rides and there was just no way I could carry enough books with. I do like my paper books overall though. But I'm sure if I had a decent eReader, I'd end up buying some books for it too.

I could totally see reading a lot of magazines on an iPad. I actually think that would be an awesome thing. I love to read magazines but hate subscribing to them and buying them because of the dead tree/clutter factor.

Weirdly enough, my book is selling rather well on the Kindle. And it's not even officially released yet! But the hard cover is SUCH a pretty book. It's sort of a pity. Not that I begrudge the sales, mind you.

The thing I LOVE about my kindle is note taking. It organizes all my notes in one spot. No more searching through books or finding random scraps of paper. Plus I can download my PDF's and magazines. Oh, and it can READ TO ME when my eyes are too tired. Love it.

I ordered an ipad (they're *still* not released here) for exactly that-- magazines and the "wee" books I want to read but probably only once. Space is an issue here and it's not a good idea to have too many bookshelves for all the earthquakes (in our last earthquake in my little town we had one fatality and it was a lady who was buried under her bookcases!).

Dawn, the note taking and being able to read PDF files are very appealing to me. Oh! and highlighting. Oh oh! and being able to look up a word right then and there without getting out the old dictionary and pen and notebook.

PS Other Lisa, I have pre-ordered your RPT via "real book", not e-book.

Other Lisa said:

Weirdly enough, my book is selling rather well on the Kindle. And it's not even officially released yet! But the hard cover is SUCH a pretty book. It's sort of a pity. Not that I begrudge the sales, mind you.

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Why yes it is. It's on my lap right now since I just started reading it.

I'm torn on the subject. All of the things like highlighting and note-taking appeal to me. And yes, reading magazines would be great since I have no emotional ties to them. (Although we have a massive collection of National Geographics)

But idk, I really love feeling paper between my fingers. And I love people watching...and looking at what they're reading.

OL-I'm dying to read your book--can't wait! I'm in the valley, btw. Up near Mulholland. I lived in Venice for years--loved it.