My Modest Proposal ... and You Can Call Me Crazy If You Like

Here's the scenario: Author sends MS#1 to Publisher A. She waits six months, hears nothing, sends MS#2 to Publisher B. Waits eight months, hears nothing, sends MS#3 to Publisher C. Finally, after a year and a half, she gets a "No thanks" from Publisher A on MS #1. Undeterred, she sends it to Publisher D. Still waiting to hear from B and C. If Author is really on the ball, she now sends MS#2 to Publisher A, but the details of who's got what are beginning to get murky.

Does that sound a little nuts? It is.There HAS to be a better way to do this. It may be that Publisher A would go ga-ga over MS #3, and Publisher B might be searching high and low for a project like #3. But they may never see those projects because authors like me are stuck in the old hit-and-miss, I-just-heard-about-another-possibility method, and decisions are rendered so slowly that a project can sit for years before it gets picked up, as mine did.

Why can't we send a publisher (or an agent, for that matter) a list of what we have that's polished and ready and let them decide what sounds interesting to them? Why are we trying to guess what they will like or what they need right at this moment? Again, call me crazy, but if business professionals received a list of from each author of what she has available, it would save a lot of time and back-and-forthing.

Of course, it's just an idea.

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