Don't Do That

Let me tell you a story.

A long-ago client—I’ll call him Doctor A—had an unconventional therapeutic process. It’s pretty commonplace these days, but back in the 1990s, it was groundbreaking—so much so, that an important house wanted to publish his work. Not unlike other academics, he’d written it to a bifurcated audience in an uncomfortable mix of scholarly and colloquial language tiers. The publisher was insistent, the doctor asked me to help get his manuscript into shape.

But Dr. A did not like any of the changes I made, even though I was adhering to his publisher’s requested edits. He had pride of authorship, i.e., he wanted his publisher (and readers) to want what he had to share the way he wanted to share it. In the end, he rejected my work and sent in a slightly copy-edited version of his original manuscript. The publisher rejected it and threatened to cancel his contract. I urged him to send in my draft; he did, it was accepted, and the book began moving through the production process. Then he died, and that was that. No traditional publisher will release a deceased author’s title unless that author is famous enough that the public is clamoring for their latest book. If not for his pride of authorship delays, he would have seen his book in print before he passed.

Doctor B had a fresh spin on parenting middle-school children. He, too, had a publisher waiting for his manuscript and he, too, needed help bringing it up to what we in the business call “industry standards,” the bane that makes so many writers grouse about traditional publishing and throw their potential down the drain.

He, too, stalled and argued, once slamming his hand down on a restaurant table to emphasize how he was the author, damnit, if they wanted his book, they should accept it the way he wrote it! He, too, sent in his original manuscript as the final draft, and it, too got rejected—but that time, the editor called to chastise me, reading aloud from the unacceptable work. “Uh oh,” I said, “his secretary must have sent the wrong draft by mistake. Would you like me to send the one I worked on with him?” That version made the NY Times bestseller list. He never forgave me.

Doctors C/D had written a fresh, intriguing work on relationships, an evergreen topic. They didn’t have a publisher; instead, they had a stack of rejection letters from myriad literary agents and acquisition editors, and they could not figure out why. Everyone claimed to like their ideas, but no one wanted the book. I quickly sussed out the easily remedied problem and offered to do the rewrite that would likely land them both an agent and a publisher.

But no—like Drs. A and B, they had their pride of authorship. If readers did not want what they wrote, the way they wrote it, those readers would have to suffer without their book. They came back to me twice; I gave them the same advice twice (because I knew what the problem was), and they rejected me, twice. Despite years of submissions, no agent ever took on the title, no publisher ever offered a contract.

Don’t do that.

Don’t let your pride of authorship—or any other kind of pride—stand in the way of your book’s success. Book-industry professionals know more about their business than you do, just as you know more about your business. If you want their help, for heaven's sake, let them help you.