Yesterday I had an epiphany. An Oops moment in my thinking. For years, when I went to submit a piece of writing to someone, whether it be magazine, publisher, contest, whatever, it was always via double spaced pages sent via the post office. Expensive sometimes. In more recent years, some perfer to have submissions sent to them via atttachments to email or body of the email or perhaps a disc. Slightly cheaper and quicker for sure.
Now, there is this First Novelist contest I had considered entering “Whispers” in. Any first time novelist published in 2012 through tradional publishing houses can enter. My hitch was the fact I would be required to submit three copies for review. Now in my ‘old world, pre publication’ thinking, that meant printing three copies of the double spaced manuscript, just under 300 pages each, and posting them off as they requested snail mail submissions. That’s just under 900 pages of paper, which would cost a small fortune to print and post. Was it worth it?
I hinged on this question for days. Going back and forth. Should I or should I not? Could I even win or not? Someone has to win. Why not my book? But the expense–
Then, yesterday, somehow my mind shifted over from pre published thinking to Published Thinking. Wow! Okay, they want three copies of the published book. Well, duh! Now I consider that. Finally. Slow, but I do eventually get there.
That is much more do-able. And something I still have a few weeks to get to doing. So here I go….
Ryan Jo Summers 