Some advice please...

Hi all. I've been sitting on a novel that spent two years getting shopped to major publishers before my agent ran out of ideas RE: where to send it. I got a lot of very generous (and hopefully genuine) compliments in a collection of rejection letters that I'm now burning to keep warm at night and essentially the same comment: "we like it, we don't know how to sell it". The fatal flaw, apparently, is that it's too contemporary fantasy for sci fi, and too sci fi for contemporary fantasy, which I guess is that happens when you have characters generally considered magical in a universe where there is no magic.

I feel strongly enough about the potential of this project to have already written the first draft of the next novel in what I'd expect to be a three book series, but publishing the first book-- it's called IMMORTAL-- would be a good start. So my question for the collective godheads of the room: where do you think I should go with it next? Mid-market/small-market publishers, clearly, but who? Can anyone recommend a particular publisher? Any contacts I can tap? I know I'm new to the board, but my name should be familiar to at least a few of you... Feel free to contact me privately if you prefer, by email or I'm on Facebook. Or here.

Gene Doucette

Yeah, I'd say the agent just gave up, although the truth is more complicated. He switched to another agency...

I'm ready to go small or mid market. What I'm wondering is what publishers are out there that meet this criteria.

Good advice all. Maybe I should add one more detail: I did shelve it and I did write the next book. At around the same time I sent it to the aforementioned agent-who-changed-companies-and-stopped-representing-me (I found out he wasn't going to take it after he'd switched) I had some personal tragedy to deal with, and by the time I got back into the swing of things it was as a screenwriter, which is what I've been doing for the past 18 months or so, with some moderate success. So NOW what I actually have is three novels (the first one was shelved to write the second one and its sequel, and then they were shelves to write the third one), a screenplay based on the first novel, a pending screenplay based on the third novel-- which has never been shopped-- and a potential cult trilogy in the form of the second novel and its sequel and whatever theoretical third book might come later.

So here is what I really really need: an agent who will take on someone with a very good screenplay based on a decent book that was shopped some time ago without success, another book that was shopped recently without success, a third book that has never been shopped anywhere with a pending screenplay based on it, plus another screenplay unrelated to any of the above and two more as-yet-incomplete screenplays.

But the truth is, after it took me forever to find my first and second agents, I didn't have the energy then or necessarily the patience now, so my solution has been: find a publisher for at least the middle book, and work on getting the screenplays out there in the meantime.

I just described eight years of my work. How incredibly depressing.