November 10, 2009
Hoboken, NJ: Barnes & Nobles Booksellers coffee shop
It was a Saturday afternoon. I had committed to myself I would finally finish the new ending to my first novel, One Blood about a two hundred year old curse from slavery that comes back to haunt a contemporary cast of characters. The words were coming fast and furious, for once. I could see the finish line.
Then a thought stabbed me in the brain like a massive charlie horse. What the hell is the point of this?
I looked around. I was surrounded by published work. Would (my pen name) Qwantu Amaru’s work ever ascend into this Pantheon? At the rate I was going, maybe sometime before the world ended in 2012. Maybe.
Getting published is a process. Finish the first draft. Revise. Content edit. Revise. Copy edit. Revise. Write the query letter. Submit to agents. Collect rejections. Revise query and send out again. Collect rejections. Revise manuscript based on agent’s suggestions. Continue to pitch and submit. Collect rejections. Revise again. A pattern emerges. Finally get an editor. Said editor fights with other editors until they agree to publish your book. Editors then fight with sales and marketing team until they agree they can get your book into bookstores. Get a launch date. Choose book covers. Write back cover copy. Get early reviews. Build buzz. The book comes out!
And if you’re exceptionally fortunate your book sells just enough copies to allow you to keep your contract and make 1-2% royalties on a novel it took you six years to complete, three years to edit, one year to sell to an editor, and another eighteen months to actually see on a bookshelf.
This shit is for the birds, I thought. I was 32. My life was coming apart at the seams. My Dad had broken his neck in a car accident three months back and was on workman’s comp. My day job as a successful marketing executive was on its last legs – at least at the company that had groomed me for the past seven years. They’d been bought out by a bigger company. No room for someone like me. On to the next one.
But writing was still there. Writing had saved me from heartache, divorce, and myself since I wrote my first poem over twelve years ago. I desperately needed it to save me from an uncertain future. But to do this I needed to regain some control over the process.
I picked up my Iphone and found the contact info for Stephanie Casher, a fellow author in the struggle and an exceptional editor who was half the reason my book was nearly finished. One thought put a smile on my face and hope in my heart. What if she, I, and her writer boyfriend James Lewis joined forces to start our own publishing company?
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