by
Paul Collins
Once upon a time authors just wrote and the publishers published. But times have changed, of course. It seems that marketing/promoting a book is now as time-consuming as it is to write.
Mole Hunt – Book #1 in The Maximus Black Files, started off as a very rough draft. Rather than polishing it, I wrote books two and three in rough draft, too. I did this because I knew important material in book one might need to be changed to accommodate the other two books as they evolved. I see no point in slogging over a manuscript that might need severe editing or changing due to new ideas materialising further down the track.
Once I had all three books at first draft stage, I started in on polishing Mole Hunt. A year down the track I had the final product – well, as final as the author can get it before an editor wants massive changes!
Mole Hunt’s road to publication was long and arduous. But I’m used to that. Just about every Australian publisher also knocked Dragonlinks
and The Glasshouse back before they finally found a home. Both books are my best-sellers. Either publishers “get it wrong”, or maybe they’re full to capacity and can’t fit more titles into their schedule. Regardless, I find persistence is the best piece of advice I can ever give to writers starting out.
and The Glasshouse back before they finally found a home. Both books are my best-sellers. Either publishers “get it wrong”, or maybe they’re full to capacity and can’t fit more titles into their schedule. Regardless, I find persistence is the best piece of advice I can ever give to writers starting out.
So about four years after its first submission, Mole Hunt came out on June 1. Time to resume the publicity trail. I say resume because review copies go out to magazines and newspapers two months before the release date. Some magazines require a longer lead-time. Bookseller + Publisher, for example, works about three months ahead. If you leave sending them a review book with less time than that, you’re likely to end up in the also rans.
