 |
| Nicole Murphy – Photo by Cat Sparks |
Breaking in – can you talk about your experience of breaking into the publishing industry and how you sold the Dream of Asarlai trilogy to HarperCollins?
At the end of 2007, I came to a realisation that if I was ever going to live a happy life, then I needed to give my dream of being published everything I had.
So I re-arranged my life, went to work part-time at a local supermarket and picked the project I was going to work on.
I chose my fantasy romance novel because it not only was one I enjoyed working on, but it was also the one I considered most commercially viable out of all my projects.
I started working on it in earnest in February 2008 and by November, it was ready for submission. For reasons that to this day I don’t understand, I decided to submit myself and not get an agent. I targeted three markets – America, Australia and electronic (note – nowadays you’d be fighting an up hill battle to get a major publisher to sign you if you’ve sold erights elsewhere – take note).
America I submitted to Baen (which you can do without needing and agent, but it takes a long time for them to get back) and then I forgot about it. Electronically, I chose three or four romance-based epublishers (romance has REALLY embraced electronic publishing, more than speculative fiction) and started subbing there.
In Australia, I started with Allen and Unwin, who were running the Friday Pitch. Every Friday, you could submit a completed manuscript and it would be considered. I didn’t think I’d get picked up by them (A&U are known for a more literary style than I write) but I wanted to get my first rejection out of the way quickly. It was a good rejection – not for us but one of the better manuscripts we’ve seen.
That encouraged me to keep going. Next was Orbit – I knew they were chasing Australian authors for the global imprint. The response I got from them was not for us – but they’d passed it to their romance department as well. They too passed on it but still I was encouraged – books don’t get passed around a publisher unless the first editor sees something in it. Orbit’s thought – too much romance for them.
At the same time, I got my second electronic rejection and it said – too much fantasy. I was confused – which was right? In the end, I decided to back my own thoughts and I submitted a query to Stephanie Smith at HarperVoyager.
Stephanie said she’d see the manuscript, so I sent it to her. By now it was May, 2009. I saw Stephanie at the Natcon in Adelaide in June and she told me that she had it, but it would probably take her a while to read it. So I went on with other things and didn’t pay no mind to what was happening with my novel.
A month later, Stephanie emailed me saying she loved the book. That was a Friday. I spent the weekend doing up the trilogy synopsis (I’d only sent her the first book synopsis with the query) and sent that to her. Thursday, she contacted me saying they would take it to acquisitions and checking on possible publication dates. Friday, she called to talk me through the whole process. The following Tuesday, HarperCollins decided to buy the trilogy.
It happened RIDICULOUSLY quickly. Honestly, it doesn’t normally happen this fast. There’s lots of people out there that can tell you they waited months, even years from when the manuscript was submitted until it was purchased. Six weeks doesn’t happen.
The publishing happened fast too. That was all July 2009. Secret Ones (the first book) came out July 2010, Power Unbound in January 2011 and Rogue Gadda hits the shelves July 1. Fast, fast, fast.
