When Do You Throw In The Towel On A Manuscript

At what point do you say, well, this book is going no where? What I am talking about here is when you have been sending that book out to agents and editors and getting rejections left and right. What do you do? What is the next step?

Ok, I know a lot of you will start to dive into the social media urban myths of how many times supposedly all of your favorite authors got rejected. I always love to hear these stories by random authors at conferences. The numbers reach in the triple digits. But who cares about them, what about you?

Probably some of you have been revising that darn manuscript every time you got a rejection and trying again and again with still no forward progress. So now what? 

In today's world, here is what I am seeing many authors doing, and personally, IMHO, and yes it is a big IMHO it is a big mistake... they decide to self-publish the book. They take the "to hell with them approach" and I will prove them wrong direction. And here is why?

First of all, if people have been telling you no, they have been saying so for a reason. It is probably not marketable. It might be it is not right for the market. It might be the writing. It might be for any number of reasons. The key is, people have been giving you hints over and over again and you are not listening to them. Why aren't you taking a hint. Catch a clue!!!!!

Secondly, you are now putting your name on a product that is now out in public that is going to reflect poorly on you. Now, when you approach an editor or an agent with potentially a good project later, and we see what you have put out in the past, ugh! Not cool. You have now ruined your reputation. 

Next, I have talked about this before, but unless you are familiar with marketing and you know the costs that go into self-publishing, you might be spending a lot of money and getting nothing in return. This is one of those early chapters in Business 101 called COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS people. Go check it out!

Ok, so some other people will take another version of the self-publishing approach and try to hide it by starting their "own publishing company." Come up with a cool name, "Barking Dog Books" (Just came up with that one since Editor Benjamin and Editor Steve Rogers were barking at the Amazon Prime delivery driver outside) and make it look really good. Still, it is the same things so read the earlier paragraph.

So, let's try a third option... go back and try to edit the heck out of the story and "fix it". You'll make it all better and try to resubmit it. Hey, some of the people liked some of the story, right? You remember there were some people who sort of hinted that there were things they liked, right? 

Now you spend 3 months rewriting, reworking, retweaking that story. You change character names. You come up with new titles. You rewrite the synopsis. 

But do you want to know something? That is 3 months that will get you nowhere fast. That is 3 months that you could have spent moving on.

Honestly, the best bet is to just look at it. Say thank you for what you have learned from that writing exercise and put it int he bottom drawer of your desk. Put a big ribbon around it. Leave it there and move on. Think of it this way. Remember when your computer died and you took it to the computer guys and they say it is cheaper to buy a new computer than to fix it? 

Same thing here!

Besides, you can now take that manuscript to those conferences where you will be a keynote speaker after you are a New York Times Best Selling Author with that new manuscript and show them your first lesson learned as an encouragement for other new authors.