The Rise and Tragic Fall of my First Publisher
By: Walter Rhein
Tags: Creative Writing, Writing, Editing, Books, Publishing

The Rise and Tragic Fall of my First Publisher

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

The manuscript started with the true account of the time I was hauled off a tour bus at gunpoint. This was back in the days when I was a reckless kid in my 20s. I was traveling from Peru to Ecuador when the bus stopped in the jungle and soldiers with machine guns came on board and told all the men to get off.

It’s a sobering moment to have a scowling mercenary wearing a mismatched uniform jab you in the stomach with the barrel of an AK-47.

It was a good hook, it still is. I’d had a good relationship with the publisher having done two books with them already. I felt confident that this was the best manuscript I’d yet turned in. Imagine my surprise when they rejected it.

Small publisher

I’ve always worked with small publishers. I’ve taken a few halfhearted swings at the big leagues, but nothing more than a few email submissions to agents and other people with supposed connections. The truth is that I like the small publishers. I like being able to sit down with a coffee with the guy who owns the company and fret about how to keep the place in business.

The first book that this publisher had done of mine had been a kind of paint by numbers fantasy. The book got positive reviews but didn’t really take off. Fortunately my publisher insisted that the best way to promote your first book was to write a second.

The second book I did for them was a work of biographical fiction about the years I spent as a cross-country skier. This is not the type of book that you write to get rich, but I knew that there was a small group of very passionate people who would be interested in the topic. Beyond Birkie Fever was released in 2010 and hit the ground running. To this day people write to tell me they read it once a year.

No marketing

The problem with partnering with a small publisher is that there is almost no marketing budget. You, the author, basically have to do all of the promotion yourself. There’s no muscling your book onto shelves at the expense of everyone else. You can’t rely on browbeating people into being afraid to admit it’s not great. If the work is going to stand any chance, it has to actually be good.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

With the success of Birkie, I felt confident the publisher would be open to my next effort. I set to work on another work of biographical fiction, this time dealing with the 10 years I spent living in Peru. When I finished, I knew I’d completed a very solid novel. I didn’t think it’d sell a billion copies, but I felt it had a very good chance of speaking profoundly to at least a few of the people who happened to pick it up.

Big changes

As I was writing the Peru book, there were some changes going on with the publisher. They’d had a little influx of money, so they were in the middle of a makeover. They got a new logo, redid the web page, and hired a new chief editor.

The new editor had a master’s degree, but I didn’t recognize any of the books she’d worked on. As I finished working on my book, I received a few emails from some of the other authors at the publisher. We’d formed a very close community and supported each other.

“Watch out for the new editor.”

At the time, I’d already been working as a writer long enough to develop a thick skin. The editing process isn’t always pleasant, but there’s no reason it can’t be courteous. I knew the other authors who worked for the publisher were professionals. If they were complaining about this editor, there must be a problem.

Rejection

I sent off the manuscript. A few weeks later I got a lengthy rejection letter. I don’t mind being rejected, but it irks me when I’m rejected for nonsensical reasons. For example, in the book I mention how many of the people in Peru have rebar sticking out of the top of their houses. This is because when their children get married, they build on top of the existing house and live there with their parents.

“My assistant editor is from Peru and she says this isn’t true,” the editor wrote.

I showed the comment to my wife, who is also from Peru, and she snorted. “The only people who would deny something like that are those entitled, rich jerks who never really lived in the country.”

There were pages and pages of similar ludicrous comments. Reading them made me angry. I decided to do some research and write to the publisher directly.

Cleaning house

After giving myself a few days to think the situation over, I thought I’d figured out what had happened. My fellow authors and I were all disappointed. We’d been developing momentum and felt we had a good thing going. A couple of the early books had sold really well. However, it turned out that all the subsequent manuscripts of the original writers had been rejected by the new editor. It seemed to me that she was trying to establish herself, and part of that meant cleaning house and tearing down everything that had been built to that point.

From a business perspective, that strategy didn’t make any sense.

I sent the publisher an email expressing my concerns and he requested a phone call. We talked for about a half hour and it was a nice conversation. I liked him and I appreciated the work he’d done building up the publishing house. It concerned me that this editor was undoing much of what he’d achieved. But he was all-in on her.

Eventually, the publisher told me to resubmit my manuscript with some revisions and we’d go from there. One of the suggestions was that I had to put in flashback sequences throughout the book that revisited the opening scene. I didn’t feel great about the idea, but I made the changes.

New publisher

While all this was going on, I’d had a different book accepted with another small publisher. As a writer, you need to be constantly on the lookout for new opportunities, and I’d gotten to know Janet Morris of Perseid Press on Facebook of all places.

When the Peru book got rejected for a second time by my original publisher, I sent the manuscript to Morris. She agreed to publish it, but on the condition that I take out all the flashback sequences that revisited the opening scene.

“These don’t add anything, why did you put these in there?”

The old publisher closes its doors

About a year later, my original publisher sent out a note that they were ceasing operations. To their credit, they returned the rights of all of our books to the original authors. I was and remain very grateful to them for the opportunity they provided me and the honorable way they wrapped up our interaction.

There are some people that are very good at creating an impression that they have some grand literary insight. Some of these people have such strong personalities that everybody around them is inclined to just get out of the way. It was enlightening to work with Janet Morris during the editing process of my book. I was often fearful of engaging in discussion with her because I thought she’d drop me as an author.

However, Janet assured me that, at the end of the day, it was my name on the cover of the book, and I had the right to address issues in the way I saw fit, or not make changes if I thought that was for the best. Writing is a collaborative process, and any editor who is discourteous or insulting only demonstrates incompetence.

Today I think back fondly on my first publisher. We had some grand successes together, and I remember them every time somebody recognizes me for Beyond Birkie Fever. I only wish we could have kept on building together.