...And now I wait...

 

I've sent my manuscript off to 30 agents and/or publishers. In the process of doing that, I learned that it's probably not a good idea to be shopping your idea to publishers first because if you find an agent to represent you, and that agent sends your work to a publisher that you've already sent to and got rejected...it's a no-go anyway...even with revisions?

 

It's quite the jungle to navigate through. I was beginning to exhaust my resources, so when I finally hit my 30 goal, I was kind of glad. But in another way it gets kind of addicting. The information and helpful articles keep striking interest in me that makes me want to do more of this. So we will see what happens.

 

In the meantime, I am going to go ahead and get my drawings polished up, (I have a few skies and lawns to airbrush), and an injured foot to correct...before Christmas break it was the left foot. When I resumed work on it, I drew the next picture of the injured foot and it was now the right foot! (picture below) So I need to fix that. Just some minor things.

 

After I do that, I'm going to go ahead and self publish it. If I'm understanding it correctly, an agent will still take you on if you have self published work. In fact, they like to see that you've done this step and had success.

 

It can take an agent anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months to get back to you, if they do at all. Some will simply not respond if they aren't interested.

 

I've gotten a few automated responses stating that they received the submission. I have also received 6 'no's'.

 

One of them was a 'lovely rejection'...an oxymoron I wouldn't have understood until this process! Really enjoyed the story and artwork, they are just too busy to take on any new material right now. Which is the case with a lot of them. If you can imagine trying to read say, 300 manuscripts a month! And I have a short one, most of what they get are novels. So it's understandable when they reject you, and it isn't getting to me so far. It's a big, big part of it. And patience is a must.