Hope for the best - Part 1

As you probably already know, the book is sitting with a publishing house at the moment, and with luck I will hear back later this month about whether they want to publish it. Given that, why all the contingency planning?

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

The best is if they pick the book up. The worst is if they pass.

If they say yes, then great. The book gets published by people who can make the most of it. My marketing and distribution (trivial compared to what a publishing hosue can do) are simply there as a base that they can take over or integrate with their own contacts.

If they say no, then the book is adrift. If I haven't planned ahead, then all the marketing and distribution I set up is lost. At that point, final galley or not, the book simply becomes another unpublished manuscript doing the rounds. Having got this close to seeing print, that seems like a waste, so I am planning for contingencies.

This doesn't mean I'm not hoping for the best.

(Continues Tomorrow in Part Two)