I completed my novel, THE BOB DELUSION, earlier this year and more or less haven’t touched it since. That’s because “completed” and “finished” are two different things. I’m utterly convinced that it’s a good and in some ways inventive novel (if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have spent six years working on it.) Right now, it’s the best that I can make it on my own. I’ve got it out on submission to about 15 agents (although I’m not even totally certain that I am going to need one) and one publisher (the real point of this post), and though it’s been a while, I have heard from only two. Given that it’s still out there, you can guess what the response was.

It’s remarkable to me how much the publishing industry has changed in the years that have intervened between the time when I worked at Berkley Publishing, The Ellen Levine Agency, and later, Viking Penguin—this was the late eighties and early nineties, before you were born, probably. Before Putnam Berkley and Viking Penguin made nice-nice and merged, or whatever the deal was. Of course, a lot of this change has to do with computers, but mostly with the Web. When I was at Berkley, David Shanks was the only one who had a computer in his office. At Viking, I don’t remember seeing very many, except on the desk of people who set the type. But the biggest change for me is the submission process.  Continue reading →