It’s a new year. Time to make resolutions, plans, and goals. Since thoughts create reality, and imagining something very specifically is said to bring it to life, I’m indulging in a sequence of wild and very specific fantasies around successfully getting an agent and selling my novel. In addition, the fantasy does a great deal to soothe the sting of reality when another rejection rolls in.
Dear Author,
Thank you so much for sending us THE LIGHTED HEART. We love it and we want to publish it immediately.
When we say we love it, we mean we started reading it on the train home, and we missed our stop because we were so absorbed in the book. We had to call an Uber driver to come pick us up, and we were happy to wait because that got us all the way to Chapter 14. We thanked our lucky stars and the patrons of our local noodle place for delivering. We read the MS on our tablet at the table, ignoring our devoted spouse, our 9yo son, and our 14yo daughter, who at any rate was ignoring us back.
We looked up at midnight, thrilled and delighted and sighing with satisfaction at the ending, to find that spouse had put the 9yo to bed still in his soccer year, and the 14yo had forwarded your book to her own tablet and was reading the first half under her covers. We yelled at her to go to bed and later learned she spent the first 3 class periods of school finishing your book, and when she came home she begged that we will publish it and ask you to write loads more books like this. She says she had been dying (teenagers can be so dramatic!) for stories about smart, ambitious women who tackle real problems but who also make mistakes and fall in love, who aren’t royals or fairies or werewolves or in fantasy worlds but who live in this world, in a time and place that actually happened. It is not overstating the case to say that we are eager for stories like this, too.
Everyone on the publishing team read this book in one sitting and already wants the sequel, though I will note they all want you to write the stories of different characters. I can only hope we are the first in line to make you a publication offer, and we sincerely hope you will allow us to publish this brilliant, beautiful, delightful, touching, funny, instructive, entirely absorbing book.
We offer royalties of 50% of the cover price, and we can arrange an advance, to be paid upon signing of the contract, delivery of the edited manuscript, and upon final release. We are also prepared to offer first rights and advances for future books. Our film agent believes she can option this immediately; she thinks it will translate very well to the screen. Our creative team is talented and dedicated, and I confess our cover artist has already begun on designs, which we will of course ask for your final approval. Our marketing department is small but mighty, and you can expect press coverage, reviews in major venues, a 10-city book tour, and a handful of speaking engagements and conferences.
We are so grateful you shared Thomasine’s story with us, and we can’t wait to share it with the world.
Sincerely,
The Publishers
And now I want to start my own publishing company just so I can write letters like that all the time.
