Waiting

[Peg Herring]

The hardest thing for me about the publishing business is waiting. You send queries to agents and you wait while they wade through the stacks of queries they receive each day. You get an agent and he/she sends out MS packages to publishers and you wait while some assistant reads it, passes it on to the next person up, and so on. A publisher nibbles, and you wait while editors confer and decide. They take the book and you wait while an editor goes at it to make it fit their guidelines. You okay the changes and you wait while it's copyedited. You okay THOSE changes and wait while the ancillary material is assembled. And then you wait for publication, at a date some time in the future that suits the marketing plan of someone somewhere in the company.

You wait in a kind of limbo: no one else wants to look at your work until your first novel succeeds or fails. There are things to do: building a list of contacts, getting prepped for signings and such, but nothing can really go until the book is actually out there. You go to cons and watch other first time authors smile and tell about their books, but you can't sit on a panel or talk to large groups of people about your book until it's for sale.

Does all this sound like frustration? Yes. Am I still thrilled to be looking forward to publication? OH YES. I just wish there were a little less of that thing that's hardest for me: waiting.