Reach Out

Monday, we talked about things you need to keep in mind while you’re sending your work out to your preferred publishers. Today, I have my final pointer, while you’re sending out your work. The last thing that I really think you should do, if you’re going to get in.

Reach out

Yeah, it’s something I’ve been telling you to do, from start to finish. You need you show yourself as a friendly person, as someone who publishers actually want to work with, someone who can easily market themselves, without a second thought. After all, these days, half the marketing really does fall on your shoulders. Reaching out now will help you get better at doing so with your readers, and anyone else you need to reach out to.

So get in touch, see if you can make friends and get a leg up on your competition.

Editors

We’ve been trying to meet them this whole time, haven’t we? Well, make nice with them when you are able to get in touch. Make friends, ask them questions, be a normal person and not a nervous author. Trust me, it will be a welcome change in their lives.

But in all honesty, if the editor likes you as a person, it gives you a huge leg up on your competition. If you’re rude, your chances go down. Make nice. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a nice person. You’re going to have to be nice, if you get signed. Yeah. You will. Don’t think you won’t. Nobody wants to buy a book from a jerk. I’m not even kidding.

But I don’t just mean that you should reach out to the editors at the company. There are a lot of other people there, who might be able to get you an in.

Authors

Remember, we researched a bunch of them, too. So do the same thing with them that you did with the editors. Meet them, make friends, be nice. Ask them about the business, about the company, but don’t let that be the only thing you talk about with them. Authors don’t often get contacted by other authors who don’t want to talk about writing. Show that you can be a normal person. They might give you a rave review, when they’re talking to their editor—who, you never know, might be your editor as well.

It’s not the end until you get a rejection letter. And yeah, that’s probably going to happen, once or twice. But by making nice, by being a good and kind person, you’re way ahead of a lot of other writers out there.

We tend to be eccentric, you know. ;-)

[love]

{RD}