Ask And You May Receive

I have always lived with the single belief that if you ask for something, you may just get what you want. In publishing, like anything else in the world, taking that initial step to ask for something is the start to being truly proactive with your profession.

There are a lot of times at conferences, or on social media where I hear authors complaining about things not going the way they want. When you probe them further you find that many never took the initial step to ask or to propose the idea to someone who may make that change happen. They simply "assumed" that it would not happen.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

One of my authors was just recently looking toward her next contract. We went around and around about all of these different suggestions and ideas to accelerate her writing. One thing she kept coming back to was a single phrase, "The editors have rejected everyone else so far with an idea like that." While that might be true, there was no reason not to ask. It could have been timing. It could have been the concept from the other authors. So we asked...

She now has 9 books lined up.

Another author had some ideas for a book. The editor she was working with didn't really see the book being able to head in the direction of that initial proposal. In this case, the editor saw things one way and the author saw something different. With a little carefully crafted words from the author, we were able to show that a proposal, that should not have worked, would actually work.

Think of it this way. The worst thing that can happen is someone may say no.

But then again...

Someone may say yes.