Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art and Writing

Tooting your own horn when it's out of tune.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Taking out a huge ad in the New York Times Book Review for an idea for a children's book seems desperate. I'm in no danger of doing that myself, however, because I certainly can't afford such a method of garnering attention or a publisher.

A friend emailed me this morning and told me about just such an instance. Keith H. Lewis, a wealthy man, has written a children's book about a character named Henry Sparks and has taken out a large ad directing people to his website (a horrible Flash monstrosity, but I'm prejudiced against Flash), and laid it all out on the line.

My friend didn't think the synopsis was very good and frankly, I don't either. However, I'm one of those people who rarely think a summary, or pitch, of an idea sounds good and then when I see the final product I often have a change of heart. With Sparks' synopsis, though, I had the strange feeling I was reading bits out of my favorite books as a child.

Go read the synopsis. I think you might recognize a few of these 1960's era books: Tom Swift, Happy Hollisters, Brains Benton, etc. The idea of making things out of junk reminds me of a series from the late 1970's and 1980's that I can't remember the name of anymore, but was about a group of boys who built stuff, including a cool fort, out of junk in an uncle's junkyard. They solved crimes and such. Perhaps the familiarity of his synopsis was why it didn't strike a chord in me; it's a very 1960's vein of children's writing which has been done.

But back to taking out an ad in order to obtain an agent or a publisher; will it work? Is it just the audacious, daring thing that will land this guy a publishing deal or will it irritate publishers to no end?

Frankly, I don't know. How would I know?

I did read in a book by Noah Lukeman, a book about getting published, warnings to not surround a "pilot" manuscript with too much legal wrapping because editors had enough manuscripts to slog through and weren't interested in stealing every idea that came their way. In fact, he said, they looked for an excuse to reject a manuscript and being too paranoid or too pushy could be just the thing.

The other concerns I have is that letting it be known you have money and are willing to spend it might attract a not-so-honest publisher. There's plenty out there; I've written about a few on this blog. If you have money and are willing to spend it, I'm sure someone will publish your work. Also, Mr. Lewis may never know that his writing was the real thing; it may always be that he bought and paid for the publishing, waving money to attract someone to buy the book. His book may be published but he won't know that it was purely on merit and not a vanity publication, bought and paid for even though through a traditional publishing house. Of course, if all you want is to be published, maybe these finer points don't mean anything.

Again, I don't know. I'll just have to watch the shelves of the bookstores and see if Henry Sparks arrives on the shelves in the future. Who knows. Maybe Lewis' ploy will work. This blog post suggests editors aren't as vicious as Lukeman's book hints at.