Laughable myths and sobering truths....

Interesting post today over at Nicola Morgan's blog, Help! I Need a Publisher. The life of a writer is shrouded in laughable myths and sobering truths but as Nicola says its good to be prepared.

In my last post I mentioned my submission explosion (waiting on thirteen things not 12, as first reported) and this got me to wondering. It is most unlikely that I should get a bunch of yeses but if for arguments sake I got a yes from every different publisher I've submitted to for different projects (which is possible but as i said, most unlikely) I would have 7 new different publishers (plus my current one). While I seriously don't think I have anything to worry about it occured to me that this might be considered bad form. On the one hand I write in more than one genre and not all publishers publish all things. Even if they do chapter books and picture books, they may not publish all variety of picture books. Not all publishers of chapter books publish YA. They might do fantasy but not historical or contemporary. Not all publishers do short story anthologies. One publisher may not like every story I come up with. It is acceptable then, if you write across different genre that you may have more than one publisher. But what happens if they have overlaps in what they publish. Who gets first dibs? Does it come back to the best contract? What kind of loyalty can be asked and expected? I'm thinking my submission explosion might lead to a brain explosion before it leads to anything else. From my point of view, for each of my stories I want the publisher who feels the most passionate about it to take it on (they're unlikely to take it on otherwise). And a good working relationship between author and publisher is essential. It's not my intention to annoy any publishers, but my goal for each and every one of my book babies is publication and if this means multiple publishers then I will do my best to work out any kinks that may crop up as I go along. I like to think that the more books of mine that are published, the more each publisher may benefit and every one would be happy. That's the plan.