Why Publishing Rejects You... 

I have one or two arch-enemies online who love to fight with me - I don't know why. Reading some of my posts you might think I'm bullying them (they're none too bright), but they keep coming seeking me out. Let's just say we have a troubled relationship. The 'audience' love it - folks will actually come to find me to give these guys a spanking when they're being bigots. I'm generally just caustic and ask a lot of questions that wind them up.

@@michaelsmorenburg-writer8480 I don't think anyone will get mad for poking trolls :D I'm thinking more like "hey peer/fellow writer, I think your book is GARBAGE so I'm going to DESTROY YOU!"

@@AlexaDonne I hear you. I've had it. For a 2 week period, every single day on Goodreads I got a 1-star rating (no review). I studied the pattern and it was from a same-day newly-minted profile in some backwater town with no other ratings or profile. When I had 15 of them I contacted the librarians and they were all stripped away. The only other negative was a story where the protagonist is the main preacher in a small outback town. Next thing I had a 1-star review on Amazon that started, "Well, I'm shocked..." and the reviewer went on to say that he is the real-life preacher in that town and was furious at my characterization of him. (I had no option but to pick that town as in real life, the biggest science infrastructure in history is being built around the town with the declared objective of confirming the origins of the universe). (It really is happening - the SKA Telescope). When I calmed him down to a blind panic, he admitted that he'd only read a third of the story and then hurled the book across the room and written the review. A few weeks later he came back to me and said he'd really enjoyed the story. I asked him to keep the review as it was genuine and shows I touched a nerve. He has, since then, contacted me to say he's using it as the basis for a doctoral thesis he's writing on Calvinism surviving the modern world... which blew my mind; my novel a reference manual? Wow. But for all the enemies I have for my provocative writing, if I can them to read, they always come through agreeing that I handled the topic sensitively.

@@michaelsmorenburg-writer8480 I love it that you mention the SKA [square kilometre array] telescope. In about 2004 I went to a lecture by some astrophysicists who talked about the SKA. Then it was a proposal. They said that there was no technology to store the massive amounts of data that the SKA would get. That the SKA is being built now shows the long arc of science going from a thought to reality. In the end the SKA has decided to use a JIT approach where the data is not stored but is analysed in real time with some metadata stored. My main familiarity is with the SKA near Perth, Australia. I don't know much about the other countries SKA set ups.

Hey@@musicalneptunian - yes - it's a hell of a project. I have just come from the University of Cape Town Astronomy department dropping off a copy of my novel "A Trojan Affair" to a professor there who I met last night when he gave a lecture. Quick overview You're dead right - the SKA will produce more data per day than the internet produces per year - and there is no way to move or store that. It will produce data at a rate that, if written to ordinary DVD, would crow the stack of DVDs at 1km/minute or 60km/h. They needed to build the SKA in the southern hemisphere for radio-quiet and to see the centre of the Milky Way. South America was too narrow, and so was out of the running. It came down to South Africa and Australia - both of whom built precursor infrastructure. In 2012 it was awarded to South Africa - and that left Australia's infrastructure effectively wasted. A review was held and they found that they could link to Oz and effectively get a radio dish as wide as the earth - so Oz got 20% of the project. The whole project is centred on a small desert town in South Africa called Carnarvon. Carnarvon is in a bible belt of staunchly Calvinist farmers. Of course, it is built on land still inhabited by the Bushmen or San people; who are the oldest hunter-gather culture on earth, living on land that all of our ancestors evolved on (the Cradle of Mankind) with archaeological finds going back 1, 2 and 3 million years. The idea to write the novel came out of me thinking what a great irony it was that the biggest cutting edge science initiative in history was being placed in a town that has more churches than it does ATMs. I wondered what would happen if the local preacher decided he wasn't having it and, with a cabal of elders, decided to start pressuring the aboriginal people to put in a heritage claim to tie the developers up indefinitely in court (and hope to 'chase them away to Australia'). Of course, there is much more to it than that... my protagonist is the 17-year-old son of the lead (female) astrophysicist between schools as he heads for his final year of boarding school - and he decides to join Carnarvon High as a representative of the project. He has grown up in Oxford (UK), has a posh accent, loves science and his mother's project, and has dark skin and Indian features from his evolutionary anthropologist father... He knows nothing of religious fanaticism and the rife racial bigotry of the territory (an echo of America's modernity confronting tradition). He instantly becomes the lightning rod of the town's anger. Indeed, we learn as the plot develops, that the preacher had not conceived of opposing the development until a group of Evangelicals from America's Bible Belt put him up to it... and there are two plot twists that underlie that move). So it's a really rich tapestry of discontent, suspicion, ambition, and discovery. I've gone on a bit - forgive me - but I loooooove the SKA. The impact on our world from it is going to be immense... entirely new forms of data storage, analysis, and delivery. Huge surges in hardware development and untold medical applications as the software to look out into the cosmos at Infinitesimally small and distant things in the universe are brought into the lab and allow medicine to look that deep into the cells of humans in real-time.

No you're ok, you can be a nazi just don't tell the internet lol.

@@r.brooks5287 oh okay. Phew. I got worried for a minute.

I got rejected for being a Republican... and once because the agent looked me up and said I was a bigot for being a Christian... so... I kinda went: *"Um... why does that matter? I'm not very vocal about this on media as I don't really think it matters in writing but.. okay?"* it was a real WOW moment.

it's called "Don't be a soup-nazi", Serena. ;-)

Welcome to 2020, when everyone is stuck at home brewing new political statements.

I'm like you, but I also work in a chain book store, and hope to open up my own indi used/new bookstore/community center some day.

No, that's unlikely! Once signed, an agent/publisher will likely ask you to get on social media. But it's not a requirement for an agent offer or book deal. It's only important if you're writing non-fiction.

@@AlexaDonne Thanks :)

Yeah, the first one is one of the main reasons I will probably stop writing after my first novel. The idea of spending years of my life on a project only to find someone else "got there first" because they were born before me or because they were writing while I was still slaving away as a nurse is just horrible. I'm just not prepared to throw another half decade of my life into an empty void :-/

It might mean the agent for that book might not wish to rep you. I deleted all my super ranty reviews before I queried, for this reason.

You say 'my agent' do you mean they were your agent or your agent of choice?

Yes, I'm overdue for that one, since I've done beginnings and middles :) I'll probably do it sometime this fall!

@@AlexaDonne I'm Looking Forward to it! You are amazing.

The ending thing made me think (I love him, and got me into reading for pleasure as teen) Stephen King. LOL

@@DrVVVinK stephen king is my favorite author too

I do have one! If you search "voice" on my channel it should pop up. I discussed whether it matters (yes and no) and whether you can develop it (yes and no), and do include some practical tips on how to work on it.

@@AlexaDonne Thank you. I'm wondering if voice has been a issue in querying and writing for me. I'm an immersive writer.

I mean, people get REAL mad at me for getting "political" when I feel I'm speaking pretty rationally? Makes me real gun shy. I've been called some interesting things for simply saying empathy and thoughtfulness when it comes to writing diversely is a smart thing to do :/

Alexa Donne YIKES. Well like you said, at least like 99% of the people in this community aren’t like that

Can you be a great storyteller but not a good writer?

Wattpad tracks reads and then jumps on anything that gets a lot of them. But they also take all the rights. Wattpad owns those stories forever.

@@AlexaDonne Whoa really, they own the rights for all the stories or all those that make it big? So does that mean that the author has no say in anything?

Honestly, since I'm an apolitical person on social usually (not universally, but usually) that tends to be my stock advice for people. And that advice is mostly b/c my mom taught me growing up to keep religion and politics private, so I've taken that to heart! It's none of publishing's business what your leanings are, you know? I have a lot of opinions on a wide variety of topics and I purposely... never discuss them publicly. There are def conservative writers, including in YA, but they keep it off their social feeds usually. I also think agents and editors range, though probably the most extreme you'll find is a moderate (at least in Kidlit), but it's a small subset of them who are vocally political on social. I do think, at least, that if an agent/editor doesn't want to work with you b/c of it, you probably don't want to work with them, either? Bad fit?

In my experience, people who are far right on social tend to think of themselves as "casually conservative" when that doesn't really exist in Trump's America much anymore. People have become far too comfortable with white supremacy and evil, especially in the White House and especially when compared to ACTUAL centrist conservatives of the past like Eisenhower so I think the more vocal backlash is warranted against the rising threat of the alt-right. Kids in concentration camps, propping up fascists to attack enemies over money, bragging about grabbing women by their genitals without consent and STILL winning the presidency... we no longer live in normal times for conservatives. Normal conservatives would be considered downright liberal compared to today.

I feel the same. I am a moderate, who writes apolitical YA content. I am very much against partisan politics and have criticisms with both sides, as well as issues I agree with on both sides. And I can say without a doubt that the publishing indistry, especially in YA and the Twitter writing community is a progressive dumpster fire. That goes for writers, agents, editors, and publishers. It seems that liberals are the only ones blind to it and the moderates, centrists and conservatives just know to keep their mouths shut if they want to get anywhere in this industry.

@@ThesmartestTem Basically :P

I am a liberal, and I agree. I think it has a lot to do with false perceptions of other's beliefs. I long for the days when you would take someone's word when they told you what they believed, rather than people thinking there are secret Nazis everywhere. There is also a shift away from individualism, toward collectivism that I find troubling (and deeply un-American). It results in people being called racist/sexist for treating someone as a single person, rather than a member of whatever group is in question. #9 is a big part of the reason I decided I will self publish. The free market is the way to go.

Yeah I agree. Especially considering that anything just a little bit right of libertarian is "alt-right".

Oh, I know, I lived in Germany, former East Germany to be specific. My host grandfather was an army deserter.

@@AlexaDonne Damn. Now I want to go to Germany. I want to go anywhere that has history.