Anyone Ever Find a Publisher for a Book (non-automotive) They Wrote?

dibbons said

That sounds familiar. I sent out three manuscripts to persons I have known for decades in order to receive a little feedback: a Catholic priest, a god-daughter, and a dentist who studied auto shop with me in community college. No-one has ever gotten back to me! I guess we are both on our own. I imagined it would be difficult to stimulate some interest, but after thousands of hours of writing and re-writing, it is discouraging to have zero to show for it.

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I’m actually in a similar situation at the moment. I sent out three copies of my manuscript as well, to close friends, though I have heard a little bit. No one has managed to finish it yet, life does slow things down a bit and the manuscript is over 600 pages.

I sympathize and can relate to the time invested. For my own manuscript, I actually started over from scratch, twice! The first two attempts gathered no interest, only generic automated rejection letters from publishing agents and I feared it just wasn’t good enough. On the third attempt I decided I wasn’t going to conform to the “standards” of X amount of pages for a first time author.

Doing so allowed me to include so many things that I had to omit from the first two attempts, just to try and fit in their guidelines.

I did have one friend ask me if the next manuscript in the series was done, so that he would be able to continue reading as soon as he finished the first. I take it that’s a good sign?