How do you choose what to read? (& my new novel)

The name of my new novel is Mystic Grounds, and here are a few words about it:

Have you ever wondered if your fate has already been written?  MYSTIC GROUNDS is a 39,831-word YA novel in which three friends, Esra, Anjali, and Sage, try to figure out who they are, who they’re not, and whether it’s even up to them. Esra is just your average geeky hypochondriac haiku-writing high school junior until she and her friends discover that she can decipher the future in mysterious patters formed by coffee grounds.  When good and bad predictions start coming true, everyone starts to wonder whether Esra is simply predicting the future or if she’s actually manipulating it.  Are Esra and her friends in control of their own destinies, or has the future already been determined?

I'm querying it at the moment, hoping that an agent will like it enough to sign me, and then sell it to a traditional publisher.  I know, I know, there are lots of arguments against traditional publishing, but I'm going to try anyway.  Why?  Well, there are some arguments for traditional publishers, too:

1. They can get my book into bookstores.  It's something I can sort-of do, maybe, but not really.  Especially because I live abroad.
2. They can organize translation rights.  I cannot do this.
3. Agents have a relatively good idea of what sells. If one believes in my book well enough to take on the project, they can help me make improvements to the manuscript.  
4. Traditionally published books can get reviewed by all, not just some, review organizations.
5. One must admit that it would feel really good to hear that an agent, who reads thousands of manuscripts a year, liked mine.  So I hope that happens.

I've now queried 15 agents.  One has already sent me a rejection letter.  I'm past the point of the rejection hurting too much.  Most authors have to be rejected many times before finding representation. It's part of the process.  Oh, and in case you're wondering, a query letter is a one-page letter that you send to agents.  In that letter, you have to introduce your book and yourself.  You get one page to spark their interest.  It's incredibly hard to do.  I've done my batch of 15 and now I'm going to stop and wait.  Because if there's no positive response at all, I'll have to go back to the drawing board with the letter.  You don't get a second chance with agents - once you've sent them a query letter for a project, you don't get to send them a revised query letter for that project unless it's years later and you've massively revised the manuscript.  So you don't want to write to a hundred agents only to realize that your letter is rubbish and that you should have written something else.  

It's been said that it's unfair for agents to make judgements this way, but I do think it's perfectly fair.  It's no different than how we judge books we're going to buy at a bookstore (or on Amazon).  We see the title, we look at the cover artwork.  That's step one.  They say not to judge a book by its cover, but covers do tell us a lot.  I definitely judge books by their covers (though I don't think I judge people that way.  Well, maybe a little).  Manuscripts don't have covers, though.  The next step in knowing whether you'd like to read a book is to read the back of the cover.  In a query, you're essentially coming up with hypothetical back-cover text.  

Some agents let you attach some of your manuscript.  Sometimes it's the first page, sometimes the first 50 pages, sometimes the first chapter or the first three chapters.  Of course they'll get a better sense of the book by reading three chapters than by reading one page, but how many times have you picked up a book and read the first page and thought no, this is not for me?  I have.  So I can't fault agents. 

This month, I was supposed to read a book for book club, for example, and I liked page one.  But by page two, I already didn't like it.  I read 30 pages, at which point I hated it.  I will not torture myself and read on.  I'm not taking some literature class that I will get a grade on.  The author had written other highly-acclaimed novels.  After deciding I hated the book, I read some reviews of it.  Some were glowing, but many (perhaps most) were along the lines of "I loved _______s other books, but this one is awful."  One reviewer even went on to say that if this had been the author's first book, rather than the 3rd after 2 highly successful books, he would never have gotten published.  That made me feel really good.  I'm not entirely sure why.  

All I can do is cross my fingers and hope that someone likes my book.  One agent has the entire manuscript.  She had read my entire other manuscript and loved my writing but not the characters.  I'm hoping that this time, she'll love both.

How do you choose what you're going to read?

Give Up? No... not yet

I finally have the idea for my next novel quite solidly outlined.  As I start to write, the rejection letters for other things I've queried have come in.  I hear a lot of "you are an excellent writer, but I didn't fall in love with the characters," or "your writing is solid, but the story is not for me".  Either this stuff is generic rejection stuff (in some cases, it doesn't seem to be based on other stuff in the letters), or I'm JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH.  And I think to myself, will this next novel be "good enough" for an agent to bite?  And then for a publisher to bite?  Or will it also be close but not quite there.  One agent has asked to see my next novel, which is encouraging.  But it's a lot of work to write a book, and I wonder if I should be spending my time this way or if there are more constructive things I could be doing.

The answer?  OF COURSE there are more constructive things I could be doing, but my problem is that I write because I can't help myself.  And if I give up, I'll never, ever know if I could do this, write a book good enough and sale-able enough that someone would want to publish it.

And this stream-of-consciousness blog post answers the question of what success means to a writer:  getting published by a publisher.  Not because they are the final word, but because they have a gazillion contacts that I do not have.  Newspapers and radio stations and magazines aren't interested in my book because I published it myself, which unofficially means that it is not good enough for them.

But there are rays of light in these dark thoughts.  A lot of people have read my book, loved it, and written positive reviews.  A lot of people have recommended it to their friends.  And at the end of the day, I feel confident that I did, in fact, write a really good book.  A book I would have wanted to read when I was 16.  I'm recording the audio book now (SLOW process, as slow as writing!), and I am truly enjoying it because - surprise - it's a fun story, with some very funny, sweet, poignant moments.

So it's not really true that I define my talent through the eyes of agents and publishers.  The truth is that I just want to get my story out there, and it's a frustratingly difficult thing to do all on my own.

So I guess I'll just keep on writing, at least for now.  My deadline is the end of December because I want to enter my new book in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.  So here goes...

The ball is rolling

I try to spend about an hour a day working on something to do with being an author.  Sometimes, I don't even manage to get in five minutes before I'm too tired and watching a movie on tv instead.  Sometimes, I manage 3 hours in one day.  But the average is probably about an hour, and it seems to be enough to keep the ball rolling.

This week, things started coming together:

• I finalized plans to do a reading at a local bookstore, The Munich Readery.  The reading will take place on January 14th.  We'll sell Turkish wine by the glass at the reading, and we'll also provide "pogaca" for snacking.  I'll have signed books available for sale.  I am VERY excited.
• An acquaintance with whom I occasionally play tennis and who is also totally friendly, liked the sound of my book and asked her book club if they wanted to read it and have me as a guest on the evening when they discuss my book.  And they said YES!! That will happen in February.  I am VERY excited.
• My book was mentioned in the Alumni newsletter of my high school, and the Alumni Relations Coordinator gave me some contact information for the instructors who should hear about my book.  So far, two instructors have written, expressing their interest and saying they would buy my book.  The librarian jumped at an offer of a copy, so my mother will bring her one.  Moms rock.  The instructors both sounded genuinely interested in Secrets of a Summer Village.  I loved my high school.  Being a teenager was as awkward for me as it is for anyone (or perhaps it was more awkward for me), but my high school was really special and different and truly inspired me to go for my dreams.  I would be thrilled if the students there read my book and let me know what they think of it, what they learned from it, and whether they want a sequel.  I am VERY excited.
• I'm finally in touch with a local international high school that is interested in having me lecture about the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Sign Language(s).  This has nothing to do with Secrets of a Summer Village EXCEPT that I mentioned the book when I was talking to them, and they're now also interested in my talking to their students about my book, the writing process, and maybe about self-publishing. 
• One of my brothers ordered a bunch of copies of my book to give as Xmas gifts.  I hope that none of the future recipients is reading this... Aren't brothers great?  

In order to keep things going, I've been working on some sample illustrations for my next book, which is a children's picture book about the winter solstice.  The illustrations are made of paper, like the cover of Secrets of a Summer Village, using a method called quilling.  I have submitted the text to a number of agents.  I get the feeling that they liked it but not enough to take me on as a client.  A large portion of agents that represent children's books only represent author-illustrators.  Even though I'd rather have some awesome artist illustrate my books, I'm just going to try and see.  What makes me feel significantly better is the quality of the illustrations in some of our children's books.  Or, shall I say, lack of quality.  It's worth a try.  Without illustrating the book myself, those agents are entirely out of reach to me.

I'm also filling out a form so that I can submit my ESL-version manuscript to Macmillan Education.  I am not very hopeful that someone as big as Macmillan would take on the project, but I have nothing to lose in trying....

Which is the message to take from this blog.  Try.  You just don't know until you try. 

Form Rejection

They didn't even read my manuscript.  They had taken two months to decide they wanted to see it.  I sent it to them along with a letter explaining that I had just finished the self-publishing process but that I am very interested in selling translation rights.  They very quickly sent me a form rejection.  All writers who send out queries get form rejections, but you'd think they would have been able to write me a sentence thanking me for my submission and wishing me luck in my self-publishing journey.  But no.  I am quite sure that they didn't read my manuscript and that the admission of self-publishing turned them off.  It doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies about traditional agents and publishers.  The good news?  I wasn't at all upset when I read it.  Just annoyed that they weren't more personal.

Here is the form rejection.  Enjoy!
Dear Ms. Akyil,

On behalf of the agents here at Lowenstein Associates, thank you for
giving us the opportunity to consider your work.  Unfortunately, we do
not feel strongly enough about your project to pursue it further.

As I am sure you can imagine, we receive a tremendous number of
submissions, and we are forced to limit our focus to a select group of
projects.  Agenting is very subjective, and even though we could not
take on your project at this time, another agent might feel
differently.

As a result of a high volume of submissions, we cannot offer a
detailed reason for rejection.

Please accept my best wishes for success in your writing career.

Sincerely,

--

What word describes how I feel?

There must be a word that describes how I feel, but I can't seem to find it.  Maybe the word doesn't exist in English.  Here's the situation: I convinced myself that I didn't need something (because it seemed that it didn't need me), and now it has appeared and told me that it might, indeed, be interested in me.  What is this thing?  "It" is an agent.  I have been sending queries off and on for about two years now, and while there have been a few that expressed interest, most have not.  My most recent round of querying was the most disappointing, with rejection after form rejection.  It was disheartening enough to encourage me to explore the self-publishing route.  As I started the process, the rejections continued to trickle in, and they didn't hurt as badly as the ones that had come before I considered self-publishing as an option.  I had the publishing process of my book in my control.  I got to design my cover, choose the font, and select the spine color.  I started this blog, and wrote about how much I liked self-publishing more than I would have liked going the route of traditional agent-represented publishing.

Well, last night at around 11pm, I checked my e-mail one last time before heading off to bed.  There was an e-mail with Re: Query in the subject line.  Another rejection, I assumed.  I opened the e-mail and was really shocked to read that it was not a rejection.  An actual agent, one I had hand-picked as a good match for this book, was interested in seeing the full manuscript.  Meredith Barnes of Lowenstein Associates wanted to see more.  Now, I know that this is not an offer of representation, but it could lead to that.

What is it called when you convince yourself that you don't want something because you can't get it, and then it becomes possible and you aren't sure if you really don't want it or if you were just consoling yourself because you couldn't get it?  If there is not a word for that, there should be.

And that is how I feel right now.  I feel ambivalent.  I admit that I have thoroughly enjoyed parts of the self-publishing experience.  I am putting a lot of effort into promoting my book, and I think that I will ultimately reach the correct audience for it.  But when it comes to getting it into actual bookstores, I am more helpless, especially given that my book is in English and I don't live in an English-speaking country.  I don't have a big publisher on my side, helping out with its connections and glossy promotional materials.  I don't have many connections in the foreign-rights department, even though I think my book would do really well in translation, particularly in Turkey and in parts of Europe with lots of Turkish immigrants (Germany, Austria, etc...).

I'm going to write back to Ms. Barnes and send my manuscript, per her request.  But I will also tell her that I'm on the eve of the official release of my book - I have a large list of addresses to which I'll send my press release as soon as the e-book appears on Apple iBooks.  (Dear Apple, if you're listening, you shouldn't bother allowing self-publishing if you make it so darn difficult for us to upload our content.  We own two apple computers but they are too old, in your opinion, to let me upload my content.  So my dear brother is tearing his hair out trying to do it for me on his newer Apple.  I'm not sure that is going to create user loyalty.)  Ms. Barnes may immediately lose interest in my manuscript, once I've told her that I have self-published it.  If she does, I guess I'll have to continue trying to convince myself that self-publishing is what I really want...