So I'm taking this class, Intro to Book Publishing, and we've been split into groups to form our own mock publishing houses. We wrote mission statements and submission guidelines, and then every individual student submitted query letters to the various mock companies.
On Monday, we read the queries we received, and each group chose two books to acquire for publication. I ended up being the receiver of submission papers for my company, and I was pretty giddy as people started handing me letter after letter - nine, in total. I was so excited. Big grin on my face.
My group is a publisher of middle grade and YA fiction and creative non-fiction. Of all the queries we received, two non-fiction proposals were the best. There was also a fiction book which sounded like a good idea, although the quality of the query letter left a lot to be desired (some students purposely wrote a bad query on top of their 'real ones' for the fun of it). So, we picked the two non-fiction books (one MG, one YA) for publication.
But Rachel, doesn't that make your list (the list of books you publish) unbalanced toward the non-fiction category?
That was exactly my concern. However, as it's a mock company publishing a mere two books, and which only received nine submissions, I suppose that's taking the imaginary list a bit too seriously.*
Anyway, it was fun reading and discussing the letters. But the thing that has me grinning like an idiot happened on Wednesday, when we next met for class.
After a bunch of lecture/discussion time, each mock publishing house announced which fake books they had chosen for pretend publication. Now, I had overachieved and written three letters, because for me at this point, what's the point of school if you aren't going to practice a real useful skill needed in your desired career? Two of the letters were serious and legit, but I'll admit the last one was mainly for laughs.
The one for laughs, I already knew had been rejected, because I have a different class on Tuesdays with a girl in that group. But the other two? The were both accepted.
That's right. Two out of the ten books being 'published' by the class are mine.
:D Grinning like an idiot.**
Anyway! The downside (from a time perspective) and simultaneous upside (from a practice perspective), is that this means more work for me in the class - I'll have to fill out an author questionnaire for each company, and they probably won't be all the same questions. There's other stuff that I'll have to do, too, but I don't know what yet.
But who cares!!! This real writer is being fake published. Heck yeah.
*Maybe.
**Yep. Definitely taking this exercise too seriously. ;)
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