Today I attended my local writer’s conference that meets monthly. The speaker, Kathleen Hessler, recently published a memoir, Promise Me Daughter, and spoke on the ins and outs of her experience. She also imparted some wisdom about trying to get a memoir published at this particular time. She asked for a show of hands of those working on memoirs, and ten hands in a room of forty people shot up. Would it be a stretch to say that there has been a profusion of people feeling compelled to get their stories out into the world? Baby Boomers easily defined that show of hands. Nobodies to boot. We might only now have found writing time, perhaps even pushed on by a sense of urgency. The clock is ticking and if we had any intention of leaving a literary legacy, now was the ideal moment.
Hessler ran out of patience with the process of trying to find a traditional publisher or an agent–her talk addressed querying small independent publishers only in passing–and self-published. I did get the sense that she did everything the “right” way although I have to confess, I haven’t yet read the book. The tables at our meeting venue were covered in marketing materials: business and promotion cards. That completely became her responsibility once she made the decision to self-publish. I am grinding my teeth while I write this dreading the day I, too, will have to be my own promoter.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that if I am going to find a publishing home for my own memoir written by a nobody, This Is Not a Crime Story, I will first have to practice patience.
Lisa Tener in I Can’t Get Published”: Oh, Yes, You Can. Here’s How to Get Published ends her article encouraging debut authors to stop making excuses. She wrote, “The publishing industry is not conspiring against you–I promise. In fact, it’s offering you more paths to success than ever.” She does have a point, and I’m sure it sounds like the worst first world problem when those of us privileged enough to have the resources to churn out a book complain that at this particular juncture in the publishing world, we must do more of the business end work.
Analyzing Debut Author Statistics: The Real Odds of Getting Published has its own version of optimism when it comes to getting a first-time memoir written by a nobody traditionally published. Its reassurance is that “Despite the highly competitive nature of the publishing industry, the path to publication is not impossible.” Not impossible. It is made to sound like making it through the death zone when climbing Everest. Not impossible, but just shy of that.
It further recommends you attain a literary agent. “Securing representation from a literary agent is a pivotal step that can make a significant difference.” (Imagine sound of forehead slap here). It may be even harder still to get an agent despite all the stories you hear about how this debut author found his by bumping into her in a Starbuck’s line, and that author literary gave hers an elevator pitch on the way up to their respective hotel rooms.
I am only on rejection number three, so I’ve got a long way to go. Resilience and resignation. These are what I have to muster. I’m hoping there will one day be a post in which I admit that everything I’ve written here today was sound advice, factual. I want to report that I made it through the publishing death zone, made it to the summit.
