• Prada & Prejudice (Available now from Razorbill/Penguin)

• Driven, a novella within AT ANY COST (Available now from Harlequin)

• You Wish (Available now from Razorbill/Penguin)

• But I Love Him (Written as Amanda Grace, Available now from Flux)

• Ripple (Available now from Razorbill/Penguin)

• Getting Caught (Kindle) |  (Nook) (Ebook exclusive, co-written with Cyn Balog)

• In Too Deep (Written as Amanda Grace, 2012, Flux)
  

• Dangerous Boy (Summer 2012, Razorbill/Penguin) 

Today, as everyone knows, is Leap Year. (Leap Day?)  Since I have been musing lately on how very much has changed in four years, I thought it was fitting that I blog today about where things stood for me last leap year.

Let’s rewind to our last leap day,  February 29, 2008.  I had been writing for five years, seriously pursuing publication for three years. I had signed my first agent in January of 2006, two years prior.

The novel I signed her with, THE JETSETTER’S SOCIAL CLUB, had already crashed and burned on submissions. We had about twelve rejections, all of them oh-so-very “meh.”

If the road to publication is comprised of all the circles of hell, the first circle, I am telling you, is the “not right for me” or “didn’t connect with the voice” circle. Those piddly, two sentence rejections that dismiss your novel like a cold, overcooked steak. (Wait, can a steak be both cold and overcooked? If so, I guess that was THE JETSETTER’S SOCIAL CLUB.)

I had lived in that first circle for more than two  years—throughout all of 2005 as I queried, and then in 2006, until my agent decided that maybe another project would be a stronger debut.

And so she sent out PRADA & PREJUDICE.

And that’s when I reached the next circle of hell. The “I really love this, like this, this is so great, and yeah… I still don’t feel strongly enough to take this on.”

If my book was a steak, I guess it had reached luke-warm status. But then… someone saw something in it.

And they asked me to revise it.

Revise and Resubmit requests are a staple of the industry, something not a lot of people necessarily aspire to receive, but I was overjoyed. I had reached the next circle of hell.

Also, I may have just realized that in this analogy, the final result (publication) is still hell. I have realized it, and I am amused by it, so let’s just roll with it.

Throughout the months leading up to leap day in 2008, I continued to revise PRADA & PREJUDICE, seeing it through drafts four, five, and six. In fact, I received more than one revision request, so I would revise both for specific editors, and as we gathered rejections/criticism.

I continued to bounce back and forth between the second and third circle—between lovely detailed rejections and revision requests.

But by February 29, 2008, I had been agented and on submission for more than two years. Prada & Prejudice had spent 14-15 months making the rounds, and I’d amassed 20 rejections.

I once likened the feeling to standing at a door, pounding on it with all I had, and wondering if any one would ever answer. If any one would ever just open the damned door and let me inside, where all my published friends were.

That’s what it’s like, isn’t it?

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If so, let’s just agree that writers are insane, shall we? I’m allowed to say that because I am one. I think that’s how this stuff works.

So, apparently, I insanely wrote and wrote and revised and revised and I just kept waiting for a different result. I kept waiting for a yes instead of a no.

That leap day in 2008, I didn’t know if I would ever be published. I didn’t know if I was good enough to be. I knew that at any moment, my agent could email me and tell me we’d had a good run at it, and that we needed to trunk PRADA & PREJUDICE. And it would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

She had more than done her job and my book hadn’t sold, and I had nothing else to give her. In fact, at this point I’d showed her lots of ideas and proposals and even one entire full manuscript, and to all of them, she’d given me, “meh.”

Nicely, of course, but she meant they weren’t good enough.

And so on this day I felt I was stuck. Stopped completely. She’d loved the two novels she’d shopped and they’d not sold and nothing else was good enough, and I started to wonder, really wonder, if that door was ever going to open.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my biggest revision request was still to come. It wouldn’t arrive for several more weeks, in late March or early April, as I recall.

It turns out the next circle of hell is Rewrite and resubmit. We had an enthusiastic response to the general idea of Prada & Prejudice—and the title—but this editor wanted me to go in a new direction. An entirely new direction.

I’d been standing at that door for so long, and now it seemed like I could hear someone on the other side, and all I needed to do was convince them to open the door. And this time, I refused to fail. So I tried a whole new approach.

I opened a blank word document.

I stared at the empty page.

And I started over.

From scratch.

After six drafts of the novel, I pitched everything I had and started again.

I wrote on the train every day—30 minutes each way. And during my lunch breaks, and at night. My daughter was 10 months old and my husband worked nights—so that we could avoid day care—and that meant I had to keep her up as late as possible so that she would sleep in and allow him even a few hours of sleep. I was exhausted by the time I put her to bed but I stayed up late anyway, working on the new draft.

Eventually, we resubmitted the book, and I held my breath.

And it was rejected. It’s funny, all these years later, because as an agent I still submit to this editor, and I’ve actually met her in person, and she’s absolutely lovely. And I have NO hard feelings whatsoever for her rejection, because I actually credit her for helping me get published.

I tell this story at conferences—of the editor who asked me, essentially, to rewrite my book and then rejected it—and I think people expect me to be, at the least, annoyed with her.

It was the challenge—the carrot on the stick—that forced me to take a hard look at the book and do what it had needed all along.  To dig much deeper.

Still, there is an especially deep circle of hell on the way to publication called, “Getting your hopes really, really high before you get rejected,” because, well, it’s agonizing to still be standing on the wrong side of that door, staring at the doorknob so sure you're about to watch it turn, and instead you hear the footsteps as they walk away.

Amazingly, my agent still did not give up. We were now 22 rejections in, and she said, “you know what? You worked really hard and the book has been totally rewritten. Lets take it out again.”

And she did. And two weeks later, we had two offers from major publishing houses. It sold in a two book deal to Penguin.

And now on this leap year of 2012, my career looks like this:

But I didn’t know that, on February 29, 2008. I only knew I was still banging on a door that may never open.

I’m writing this not just to reflect on my own career changes, but to say this: Today is your leap year of 2012. All you know is what your career looks like right now, at this very moment. Four years from now you’ll look back and remember where you were, and maybe you’ll marvel at how far you’ve come. If not becuase you're published, but becuase you've committed to a dream. Becuase your writing has improved. Because you've made friends you  never would have met otherwise.

Let this day be the day you make a commitment.

Let this day be the day you decide you’ll keep banging on the door-- for another four years.

Maybe they’ll be four years of rejection and dejection and struggle, but maybe they’ll be four years of triumph and success.

No one can promise you success. But you can earn it.  

So today, we celebrate… OUR INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Just kidding about that last part.

Hi All,

I am in need of a new intern (or two) to maintain the query pile. (For now, this won’t necessarily include reading full manuscripts, it will be query letters only, but that could change in the future if that is mutually agreeable). It means managing an email account by screening the queries into folders for my review, and sending the requests/rejections once I’ve reviewed them.

I suspect it is about 5-6 hours a week, but that’s flexible, and if I choose to select two interns, then the time can be split between both of you.

Some basics:

• This is a remote position (it can be done anywhere. Literally. You can live in Zimbabwe.)
• You can work at any time of the day.
• It’s okay if you are a writer. It’s okay if you are querying and have queried me or plan to.
• It is an unpaid internship, but I am happy to chat with you about publishing and give basic advice.
• If you happen to live in the Seattle-Tacoma area (NOT required) you may also be paid in lunch dates. ;-)

Please send an email to: Mandy@d4eo.com

Include:

-Any publishing background (No experience required, but it’s good to know if you do have  some)

-A list of your favorite books (5 or 10 titles).

I will wait until this weekend to screen the applicants, so the position is “open” until Friday at midnight.

So, on bookscan vs royalty statements, it's a little bit complicated, so bear with me.

Thing #1: Royalty statements are based upon copies shipped. Bookscan is based upon copies SOLD TO CONSUMERS, and doesn't generally include ebook sales. Therefore, over the life of a book, bookscan CANNOT be higher than royalty statements, or there's a serious error somewhere. You can't sell more copies than your publisher shipped. (Because again, bookscan only covers physical books. this does not include target or costco either...)

However, you have to take into account that there may be a singular statement or two where you have higher bookscan than royalty statements. Because of the timing.

 Say your book comes out January 1. Your royalty statement is for January 1 to June 30. Your publisher ships 20,000 copies. Therefore, your royalty statements say you sold 20,000 copies.Did you actually SELL those? No. Your publisher sold them to bookstores. They are returnable. 

 By contrast, for those 26 weeks during the first royalty period, you sold 250 copies to READERS every week. Your bookscan numbers show 6,500 copies sold. (YES, that means bookscan says 6500, royalty statement says 20,000.) So that means at the end of the royalty period,  in bookstores across the country, there are still 13,500 books just sitting around on shelves, waiting to be bought.

 Now, let's fast forward to your second royalty statement, July 1 to December 31. Say you are STILL selling 250 copies every single week, and move another 6500 copies. Some stores re-order to fill their stock. But maybe your books don't sell well on the west coast and they ship them back. It's actually possible to end up with net RETURNS (as in negative sales)on a royalty statement even when bookscan shows you sold 6500.Or maybe only 1,000 copies get returned, and 2,000 get purchased. Now you've sold 1,000 copies in a royalty period where bookscan says you've sold 6,500.

 But step back. Your overall statements say you've sold 21,000 copies, and bookscan says you've sold 13,000. So your overall royalty statements are still higher. And remember, there's still a whole lot of books sitting in bookstores, waiting to be bought. Your publisher already credited you those sales, but bookscan won't pick them up until Suzy Reader walks up to the register and purchases the book.

That's why it's complicated. Your publisher could over print or over ship in the first statement and show really slow sales on the second one, but meanwhile consumers are still buying it.

That said-- if your bookcan is higher than your cumulative royalty statements, then you have a problem.