Contracts

When you're offered your first publishing contract, you want to be happy. But there are too many things to consider before breaking out the champagne. Is it the right contract? Is it the right publisher?

Hopefully, you did your homework and submitted your manuscript only to those publishers who are acceptable to you, and that's what I did. I made sure that no publisher to whom I submitted was a self publisher, or a vanity press, or a subsidy press.

And when I submitted, I did the multiple submission thing. I can't submit and wait six months to get rejected before I submit again and so on. Who knows how much time would go by before I finally found a publisher. At that rate, it could be several years. No way.

Fortunately most publishers allow multiple submissions, and that's the only way to go, imo. Rejections trickle in but some of them request the full manucript. And when one of them says yes, you wonder maybe you should wait to see what the other publishers will say, and if they also say yes, you wonder how their contracts might compare.

That's where I am right now. I don't want to jump for the first contract that is offered. I'm glad I have one, and I am glad that THE VASE is on a sure track to be published. I must remind myself to be patient. And I am glad that the publisher is not putting me under any pressure with a deadline. That's a point in their favor. So I am proceeding with their expectations, but if I have alternatives I need to know what they are.

That's all.