Publishing Lessons I’ve Learned From The Gambler

          I’m a creative person, which is really just a nice way of saying that I am a complete goofball. That means my mind works in ways that normal minds do not. Here is a perfect example of this.

          As a writer, I’m always trying to come up with a new and fresh idea, whether it is for a new story idea, for a speech, or for a workshop. Of course, new and fresh ideas do not fall off of trees. Most of the time, to find a new and fresh idea, you have to take an old one and give it a facelift. Find a new angle. Use it as a jumping off point.

          A lot of people these days ask me for advice on publishing picture books. I initially always find that funny because, in my heart, I don’t think I know the first thing about it. But then I mull it over some more and I think I come up with some nuggets of wisdom.

          What I’ve struggled with is combining all those nuggets into something cohesive. That when I had this idea: take one of the greatest songs ever written, and apply its wisdom to writing and publishing. The song I chose is The Gambler – I’ve been a huge fan since I saw Kenny Rogers perform it on The Muppet Show. Oh, how I loved that show! And I’ll bet you wouldn’t believe how relevant it is to publishing. Really. I would bet you wouldn’t believe this.

          So I’m going to show you. Let’s get started.

See what I mean? How profound is that. If you’re going to play the game of publishing, you really have to learn it well. It isn’t enough to write a good story, or focus entirely on your craft. Those are vital, of course, but the business side of it is as important – sometimes even more.

By the way, the corollary to this first bit is: “If you’re gonna play the Gameboy, you gotta learn to play it right.” Also, very, very true. I hate it when my kids toss the Gameboy around like a ball instead of vegging out somewhere with their heads hunched over it. (For the record, my children do not own a Gameboy, and I’m not entirely sure if they even still make them.)

            Except… we all know that poker is not just about intuition, don’t we? (The correct answer here is, “Yes, we do know that poker is not just about intuition.” If you simply say “yes” or “no” I get confused. Are you saying, “yes, it is about intuition,” or, “no, we don’t know that,” or something else that is not the answer I just gave you as correct.) There is a lot of careful calculation that goes into playing successful poker. Think about a game of Texas Hold ’em. You have to weigh the odds over and over, not just when you get your first two hole cards, but at every step of the way. That means a strategy that looks good after the flop may not work at all once you’ve seen the turn or the river. (For those of you who don’t know anything about Texas Hold ’Em, (1) shame on you, you must be living under a rock, and (2) there’s a nice explanation here.)

If you think about how this relates to publishing, you can imagine a situation where you’ve come up with a great idea, you’ve done the market research, it’s got great sales potential and good hooks, BUT along comes the river – another very similar book being published that you didn’t know about until you were done with your manuscript. So out comes the calculating – does it make sense to fold this project and move on to a new hand, or do you play the hand you were dealt all the way through to the showdown?

            It’s the combination of intuition and calculation that makes a successful poker player – and a successful author.

Oh, I am humbled by the insight and perspicacity here. And yes, I used a thesaurus to find the word perspicacity.

How many times have you heard of a manuscript being rejected by X different publishers before one finally acquired it? In publishing, one man’s trash really can be another man’s treasure. A book that is a winner at one house maybe a total loser somewhere else. If you’ve done your research, have written the best possible story, have used your intuition and your calculations and you still get a rejection, it is possible that your hand can still be a winner somewhere else.

            Well, maybe not directly related to publishing, but a pretty good rule of thumb for life.

            We’ve touched on the idea of holding on to a manuscript even after it has been rejected, but I want to talk about a different way of holding on here. Sometimes, you have to know when to hold on to a manuscript before even submitting it. For us writers, publishing is always a numbers game – only a certain small percentage of manuscripts get acquired, and exactly 100 percent of unsubmitted manuscripts do NOT get acquired. So there is always the tendency to submit, submit, submit, and let the chips fall where they may.

            I would advise, however, that there are a lot of times when you would benefit by holding on to your story just a little bit longer. Not too long, mind you – writers need to be submitting their work to publishers – but just enough time to make sure you feel totally confident about the story. With picture book writers, I actually always say that they should not send one thing to one editor until they have six publishable manuscripts in hand. That way, if they get a good rejection, or a request to see more work, they are immediately ready to follow through on the lead.

            Also, if you are planning to go to a conference where there will be industry professionals, holding off on submitting can be a good idea. Wouldn’t it be better to make a personal connection before sending your manuscript off to a slush pile? Or, finding out for sure that your story is a good fit for the editor or agent? Know when to hold ’em, folks.

            Here’s the flip side of the coin above: sometimes, rejections should be interpreted as a sign to move on. Doesn’t this sound like the total opposite of the advice I gave above? Well, yes and no. I still think you should use your calculated intuition (or is it intuitive calculation?) after a rejection, and if you really feel like the manuscript is viable, continue on with it. But… sometimes as writers we are too close to our work to make an unbiased evaluation. So we need to pay attention to the feedback we are getting from industry professionals. Consider the type of rejection when deciding whether to fold your hand. Are they personal letters with specific suggestions? Then by all means, continue on submitting. Are they all forms? Even from people you’ve met? Then folding might be the way to go. Are they personal, but the reason given is a marketing reason (another book too similar, market if saturated with books on this topic)? Then I’m afraid folding is probably the best option. Problems with your story can be fixed in a revision. Issues in the market are out of your hands.

            If you go to a lot of writers’ conferences like I do, you probably hear a lot of stories of people who struggled for 10, 20, 25 years before getting their first picture book published. They persevered, kept writing, kept submitting, and then finally, FINALLY, the offer came in. For some reason these people are held up to be paragons of virtue. I don’t get it.

            Publishing is a slow business. Veeeeerrrrrrryyyyyy sllllooooooooooooooooow. Waiting a year or two between offers is not unheard of, and with picture book writers, the wait can be compounded by delays in the art. The publisher needs sales numbers before they can decide to sign up more books with you, but sales can’t happen until the art is finished, and the art can take forever. Just finding an illustrator can take years. So don’t ever think that the first contract is going to open the floodgates and you will be making sales at regular intervals for the rest of your career. Probably not going to happen.

            So, while patience is a virtue, I don’t understand the appeal of the 25-year waiters. To me, having to wait that long to get a book published is more indicative of a problem on the writer’s end than just circumstances out of his or her control. Consider it this way: if a student takes 5 years instead of 4 to finish college, most folks don’t consider that to be a failure. After all, things happen – scheduling conflicts, personal issues, even prestigious alternate opportunities can happen to delay graduating. But consider if that same student takes 25 years instead of 4 – is there anyone who automatically assumes that the student is a paragon of virtue for persevering that long? Absent some mitigating circumstance, that student… well, probably won’t be hired by NASA.

            Sometimes, things are not meant to be. Some dreams will never come true. I have always wanted to be 5’4” – but wishing for it, and persevering in the belief that it will happen someday if I set my heart on it, will not actually make it happen. And likewise, some people are not picture book authors. It’s a craft that can be learned and mastered, it is a skill that should be honed continuously, but it is also an art, and some people just do not have the gift. There is no more shame in acknowledging that than there is in me accepting that I will never be 5’4” (though my sister works with human growth hormone in her lab, and if she REALLY loved me, she would send me some and then all my dreams would come true…).

            I’m not at all saying that you should quit after two rejections. But know when to walk away – for your own happiness.

            Let’s shift gears for a bit, since the last section was such a bummer. “Know when to run” is a bit of advice you can use in any part of your life. Here’s how it relates to publishing: have you ever had that one idea that was so new, so fresh, that people couldn’t believe you’d come up with it? Except that their disbelief wasn’t the good kind of disbelief? We all have, at one point or another. Trust me.

            Imagine a picture book writer. Let’s call her Spoodipta. Spoodipta has studied the market. She’s learned that it is important to incorporate marketing hooks into a manuscript. She’s looked around for topics that have been overdone and things that have not been touched upon at all. She’s found that wordplay is endearing in a picture book manuscript and that many popular books incorporate word play (some of her favorites are things like THE MINE-O-SAUR or THE HAMPIRE, both of which make brilliant plays on words). And she’s realized that the most timeless books have some kind of positive (but not heavy-handed) message. So she’s thought and thought, brainstormed and imagined and finally she’s come up with an idea that incorporates all of the above:

PREGO-SAUR, THE DINO-****ORE (imagine what word would rhyme with "more" or "four")

The hook: dinosaurs, a perennial favorite. Also family values, in that Prego-saur will give her dinobaby up for adoption. The wordplay: Prego-saur is clearly a Stegosaurus. There are no other picture books about unplanned pregnancies. There will be the additional theme of the other dinos in Prego-saur’s world learning not to be so judgmental.

            Poor, poor Spoodipta. All her logic is good, but the idea is so… bad. Just so, so bad. Need I say more?

            Know when to run.

This is a good one because it reminds us that until we are super-famous, there’s no such thing as a done deal. So much can happen between interest and offer, between offer and contract, and even between contract and publication. Other ways of saying this is “don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched” or “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” But as this is not an essay on interchangeability of idioms, I will move on.

The other thing that this particular bit of Gambler wisdom reminds us is that there is always more to learn. As long as you are part of the publishing world, you have to keep studying the market and adapting to trends and to the needs of your readers. So if you think because you’ve published one book you’re an expert and you can sit back and count your money… well, I’m happy to take the pot from you on the next hand.

Yeah, so I’m not really sure that this essay has turned out to be any more cohesive than the individual nuggets I talked about at the beginning. Turns out that, as a picture book writer, I lose focus after the first 500 words…

But hopefully, in my words, you’ve found an ace that you can keep.