Surprising Factoids About Writing & Publishing

It would be nice to know it all, in publishing that is. I already know, or rather at some point since picked up, even if this was a possibility, you definitely do not want to know it all. Some things really are better left up to speculation.

But this is publishing I'm about to lean into here, an advent I had been humbly nosing around, reading as much as I could, wanting to know as much as I could, prior to jumping in, one foot after the other. And note: I'm using the word FACTOIDS, as opposed to facts, because what I've been noticing as my awareness has been increasing, is that these factoids have increasingly been changing, according to who's noting the FACT.

I didn't know that many notable female writers either studied, or lived at one time in their life, in New York. (Dern it! …snapping my fingers. Close, and almost, but not almost and close enough!)

I also didn't know that many notable female writers first published right around their 40th birthday. (Happy, happy me!)

Not too surprising however, but noteworthy just the same, was how the work of the most notable writers (historically) were originally not well-received or respected. Well wait, let's retrace the paths of that sentence there. How about the work of (historically) notable writers, being initially slammed, censured, criticized, demonized, and ostracized. (Pencil, or ink me in here… for crying laughing out loud!)

And always interesting, which we read, and hear about here and there all the time, are the number of times many, and again, notable writers were rejected... along with the (silly?) reasons why.

The funniest rejection I read about, was of an author whose work was accepted (and scheduled to be published), deciding to test this publisher's selection process. He resent his original manuscript, the one that had been accepted for publication, changing (I believe) the title and his name, to the same publisher for publishing. He wanted to know if the manuscript would even be read. In this instance it wasn't, or at least the publisher didn't let on that it had been; sending him 'the standard' rejection letter.

The above is what ultimately clued me in to the ONE pearl most publishers look for in book proposals, lending to my biggest surprise about publishing. How audiences are built.

I, as well, didn't know… until after the fact ---insert goofy grin here--- the REAL leading reason for WHY it's not the best idea to write across multiple genres, in every genre.

Similarly learning that authors (all the time) do write across genres; only they use a different pen name. (Sigh…)

I was quite surprised, (at least reading between many lines in publishing manuals I've read), to learn how many publishers, and its staff, seemed to… let's say… be not very embracing towards their authors.

…Which sort of makes it twice as surprising I never held any resentment towards publishers (as a unit), other than holding onto that one minorish-majorly gripe (depending on who and how who's seeing it), after reading 'the underlings' of how so many really felt about their core product—Authors.

What however is most amazing, and then again maybe not… given what I picked up on and ultimately now know, is that I didn't buckle, and give into the hype of salivating over being published by one of the big publishing houses... despite, for the most part, and on a general grand scale, wholly respecting the traditional publishing model. I think what I really respect is the fact that many publishers are very well read, and very smart.