How Did You Get Your Novel Published? (Part 2)

December 22, 2006 @ 3:45 pm

I’ve gotten a few requests to finish the story of how Infoquake got published, so I’m going to go ahead and finish that tale now.

When last we left our intrepid hero (i.e., me), I had spent several years working on my science fiction manuscript, carefully researched literary agents, and sent out about two dozen packages to all of the major players.

What was my original query letter like? I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Dear [Insert Agent Name Here],

Did a flashy marketing campaign persuade Lando Calrissian to buy the Millennium Falcon? Did the company that built the Star Trek transporters have a branding strategy? Did a military contractor sell arms to the Starship Troopers — and what kind of PowerPoint presentation did he use to sell them?

As a programmer and dot-com executive, I am often frustrated by the short shrift science fiction gives to the business world. Authors who go to great lengths to make their work conform to the laws of physics will completely ignore the laws of economics. This frustration was the impetus for my first novel INFOQUAKE, a literate techno-thriller in the tradition of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.

The book’s hero Natch is an entrepreneur in bio/logics, the programming of the human body. He’s a crusader in a war being fought through product demos, press releases and sales pitches. His Holy Grail? The number one spot on the Primo’s bio/logic investment guide.

Now Natch is willing to do anything to get his hands on a radical technology that harnesses the computing power of the mind. But so is the competition in the rough-and-tumble world of bio/logic programming. So is the ruthless Defense and Wellness Council, which sees Natch’s technology as a grave threat to public order. And so is a shadowy organization that wants to bring humanity to its next phase of evolution — ready or not. Eventually Natch must ask himself the eternal question: how far should you go to make a profit?

A little about me: I have trained Members of Congress on computer software, programmed websites for the U.S. Army, and run the marketing departments of biometric and e-commerce companies. My non-fiction has been published in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun-Times, and Publishers Weekly. My fiction has been published in Urban Desires and Zeniada.

I would be happy to send you the complete manuscript (120,000 words) or its opening chapters, along with an outline of two proposed sequels in the INFOQUAKE trilogy. An SASE is enclosed for your convenience.

The world’s greatest cover letter? No. Good enough to get someone to crack open the manuscript? I certainly thought so. I used Andrew Zack’s example from Writer magazine as my model (Adobe Acrobat file, 89K), and I think I followed his example pretty closely. If you’ve read the final marketing copy that’s on the final book cover, you’ll see that a lot of that copy comes from this exact cover letter.

So I spent most of the spring of 2004 waiting for some kind of response and trying to decide whether or not to get crackin’ on book 2 of the series, MultiReal, or just to abandon the Jump 225 trilogy altogether and start something new. I said in my last post that of those two dozen packages, I received not a single callback, e-mail, or manuscript request.

That’s not precisely true. I did receive a call from an agent sometime in late 2004. She told me that she really, really liked my manuscript, that she thought it was saleable, that it might need a little bit of editorial work first. I’d have to dig through my notes to verify this for absolute certain, but I’m pretty sure the woman who called me was Cris Robins. She asked if I was nervous. I said yes, a little. She said, don’t be. In the middle of our discussion, she got interrupted by another call. She promised to call me back in five minutes, and gave me her number in case she got tied up.

In that five minutes, I searched for her name on Google. Biiiiiiig mistake on Ms. Robins’ part.

I found this warning from Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I found a number of discussion group posts about her on various writing websites. It’s not worth my time trying to find the original posts, but suffice to say that Victoria Strauss and A.C. Crispin — two real published authors — have since posted many times about what a scam artist Cris Robins is. (The latest: a judgment against her by Washington Superior Court for scamming a writer named Christopher Dahl.)

Turns out there are a lot of so-called “preditors” out there who contact authors with unpublished work and offer to represent them. And then they offer their editorial services to clean up/rewrite/slash up your manuscript. Yessirreebob, just a few thousand dollars, and your novel will be ready to submit to a big-time publisher! What a bargain! Luckily, I had done my homework, so I’d heard about this sort of thing. (I had actually gotten Ms. Robins’ name from a reputable source, believe it or not — Jeff Herman’s Guide to Literary Agents.)

Ms. Robins never called back, and I never returned her call.

I was pissed. There is an alternate universe out there in which I’m currently sitting on death row for the murder by rusty chainsaw of one particular scam literary agent. (And in this alternate universe, I’m grinning.)

I was about ready to give up — not necessarily on writing, but on Infoquake.

On Friday, June 18, 2004, I drove up to Baltimore to see my old boss (and fellow Johns Hopkins alumnus) Bruce Bortz, who runs Bancroft Press. Bruce gave me my first job out of college, in fact, working at Bancroft on a variety of projects. I wrote dozens of profiles of Florida and Maryland state legislators for a series of his governmental guidebooks back in 1993 and 1994. I did computer work and desktop publishing for him. I was actually under contract to Bancroft way back when to write a how-to book about computers called A Gift from Mr. Wallakahalla, but the book never panned out.

Bruce and I went to lunch at the Mt. Washington Tavern, a place I had dined in many a night during my Baltimore years. I handed Bruce a printout of the book and asked his advice on what to do next. He told me he had acted as literary agent for a handful of novelists before, but knew little about science fiction. I gave him a quick summary of what the field had been up to since the heyday of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. I remember distinctly spelling out Neal Stephenson’s name for him. (Bruce, scribbling on a napkin: “Is that Stephenson with a ‘V’ or a ‘Ph’? And what did he write again?”) Bruce said he’d take a look at the manuscript and give me his honest verdict.

A few days later, Bruce called me. He had taken Infoquake with him on a train trip to New York, and couldn’t put it down. He loved it, and wanted to represent me. He told me that Bancroft had never published a science fiction novel before, but if he couldn’t find me a publisher, Bancroft would publish it.

My wife and I drove up a week or so later to meet with him and one of his associates. Bruce pointed out a few minor quibbles he had with the book. First: the character of Brone was too cartoonish; he spent most of his screen time (so to speak) cackling and making bad jokes. Two: the chapter on the Shortest Initiation didn’t work. Three: the chapter told from the viewpoint of the data agent was unnecessary and should be cut. I agreed wholeheartedly with Bruce on the first two points, and the third I was willing to compromise on.

We signed a contract. I had an agent.

I spent a couple months smoothing out wrinkles. I had never been satisfied with the Shortest Initiation and welcomed a chance to revisit it. (The draft Bruce read had Natch abandon the initiation camp with a dozen companions, only to have them come trickling back in because Natch had sabotaged their food supply.) Which I did, over and over again. I think the draft that’s in the final product was somewhere around the fifteenth draft. (And that’s not counting partials.) I tried another tack with Brone, and was much more satisfied with the results. It’s amazing how much easier the writing flows once you have an agent actually waiting to read your words.

As 2004 came to a close, I presented Bruce with the finished manuscript for Infoquake and he went to work selling it.

I sat back and waited. I worried tremendously that the book would go nowhere. I wondered what the book’s chances at success would be if Bancroft Press published it.

There were some frustrations over the next couple weeks. One major SF publisher declined to read the book, because they were moving their offices and weren’t accepting any new submissions, period. Another big house loved the book and apparently had some major internal debates about whether to buy it, but decided in the end to pass. One house rejected it, claiming there were too many “confusing shifts of viewpoint.”

My favorite was a major, major SF publisher that sent us an unsigned rejection letter, misspelling the name of the book, the name of the author, and the name of the agent. The letter arrived 18 months later, right about the time that the rave Publishers Weekly review came out.

Finally, in early December 2004, Bruce forwarded me an e-mail he had received from a fellow named Lou Anders, the editor of a new science fiction imprint called Pyr. Lou loved the book and thought it would make a great addition to Pyr’s third season lineup. I discovered later — much later — that it was really only chance that Lou had read the book at all. He had picked up the first page one night expecting to throw it quickly in the “discard” pile, and winded up reading the whole night through. A couple of days later, I got a call on my cell from Bruce while having lunch with my wife. Pyr had made an offer — and it had actual, real money attached to it.

There were still details to take care of. There were calls and e-mails back and forth between other publishers. There was some contract negotiation to be done. The contract was finally signed towards the end of January, 2005. Four years and three months after I quit my full-time job to write a novel, I had a publisher.

And that’s the story of how I became a professional novelist.