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Minor Bummer Encountered


Knight26

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Well the publisher who requested the additional pages wrote me back, a little bummed right now, so will let their words talk for me:

Sean J. Schauer:

Thank you for sharing your work, Infinity War The Academy Years, with us.

Unfortunately, this manuscript is not quite what we are looking for.

Please keep us in mind for any future submissions.

Yours Truly,

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Editorial & Sales Manager, XXXXX Publications

Oh well, the beginning of the book is not the best written and I have been toying around with rewriting it. However, I have still not heard back from a couple publishers including my first choice, who all recieved the whole book, so I am not totally bummed yet. But if they reject me I will just go to plan B, rewrite the beginning and start submitting short stories for a year before resubmitting with the new beginning. Well appreciate all your support, always knew it would be a painful process, but as the song goes "I will survive!"

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I'd reccomend looking into 'plan b' right now, actually. No matter how good your story is, publishers would rather pick up short stories from new authors. Names sell better than quality, unfortunately, and publishers are more willing to give the new people a small spot in a sci-fi/fantasy magazine, then a whole book or a novella taking up many pages of such a magazine. However, if you start by submitting lots of short stories, build a name and reputation for yourself, then you have a much better chance of getting a longer story printed in some form later on, and more such stories as time goes on.

I'm not saying you should stop submitting this story, I'm just saying you should work on some short stories in the meantime and get your name out there.

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I agree with them... You'll have better success selling short stories and then working up a book...

You could try splitting your story into little sections to put it in a magazine or something, then once they start getting popular, put them togeather (with maybe some new material or an ending or something) into a novel. Try to get your name out, and then try to go for the gusto.

Vostok 7

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Thanks for the encouragement guys. Actually the short stories I have written rough outlines for all occur in the same fictional universe, but star characters that appear onyl briefly in the books. They are all really fun characters that I liked and it lets me experiment with them more, so that is the plan. Of course I am waiting to hear from the last couple publishers before I impliment the plan. As I said a year+ of short story writing before I resubmit should hopefully be enough to get my name out there and better my chances of publication. I will update you all as events warrant.

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where have you been submitting your short stories, if i may ask? straight to the publishers? have you tried any of the magazines, like Analog or Azimov's? and also did you send your manuscript to Baen? they seem to be the best choice for what i've seen of your setting.

good luck and don't give up.

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I'd reccomend looking into 'plan b' right now, actually. No matter how good your story is, publishers would rather pick up short stories from new authors. Names sell better than quality, unfortunately, and publishers are more willing to give the new people a small spot in a sci-fi/fantasy magazine, then a whole book or a novella taking up many pages of such a magazine. However, if you start by submitting lots of short stories, build a name and reputation for yourself, then you have a much better chance of getting a longer story printed in some form later on, and more such stories as time goes on.

I'm not saying you should stop submitting this story, I'm just saying you should work on some short stories in the meantime and get your name out there.

Sorry to hear that. I'd go with Radd's suggestion. Btw, that's how my fav author Stephen King starded out. Good luck!

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a number of famous authors started out with short stories to get going. I've read alot and most of my favorite authors started this way. HEck... my favorite author is harlan ellison and over 90% of his stuff is short stories. Heinlien started out the whole lazarus long series with a short story and now there are a bunch of related books ;)

orson scott card, bradbury, + just about every other sci-fi author started that way. Read some of the older sci-fi/fantasy magazine, analog, etc and see how many famous authors started out there.

heinlien did a recurring theme about one character, with short stories about him appearing in almost all his anthologies. Wish I could remember the characters name buwithout digging through my books.

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