Free The Mistletoe Inn by Richard Paul Evans Page A

“Ninety-nine-cent e-books. The book world has radically changed in the last decade. There are no such things as unpublished authors these days.”
    â€œThat’s true,” Samantha said. “Amazon has like a billion books.”
    â€œI’m still unpublished,” I said. I hadn’t even considered self-publishing. I wouldn’t know where to begin.
    LuAnne said, “A few years ago at the Maui Writers Conference, Sue Grafton said, ‘You shouldn’t even submit a book to an agent until you’ve written at least five.’ ”
    â€œI guess that counts me out,” I said.
    â€œHow many books have you written?” LuAnne asked.
    I felt embarrassed. “One.”
    Both women looked surprised.
    â€œJust one?” Heather asked.
    â€œYes,” I said. “I guess I’ve had a lot of distractions.”
    â€œThe truth is,” LuAnne said, “writing the book is the easy part. Getting someone to read it is the real trick. There’s somuch competition and it gets worse every year. The problem is, everyone thinks they have a book in them.”
    â€œWhich is precisely where it should stay,” Heather said. “ In them.”
    â€œI mean, you walk into a bookstore and you think, each one of these books probably sells a few hundred copies, right?” LuAnne said. “Do you know what the average book sells in a bookstore?”
    I shook my head. “No.”
    â€œOne point eight copies. Not even two.”
    â€œHow do you sell eighty percent of a book?” Samantha asked.
    â€œIt’s in the aggregate,” LuAnne said.
    â€œIt’s a doggy-dog world out there,” Heather said.
    â€œYou mean dog-eat-dog world,” LuAnne said.
    â€œThat’s what I said,” Heather said.
    LuAnne turned to me. “Have you sent your book out to anyone yet?”
    â€œI’ve sent it to a few publishers, but they just sent back rejection slips.”
    â€œYou’re lucky you even got an acknowledgment,” LuAnne said. “Sending directly to publishers is a waste of time. They get more books than they can read just from the agents. They don’t have time to look at the nonagented books. It’s the weeding process.”
    â€œHave you tried sending out to agents?” Heather asked.
    â€œNo. I signed up for the speed-dating thing. I hope I can find one here.”
    â€œGood luck,” she said. “It’s brutal out there.”
    It’s brutal in here , I thought.
    â€œThere are two kinds of agents who come to these things,” Heather said. “The first is the kind who comes for a junket and doesn’t really believe they’ll find anything. They’re the dream killers. They just love shredding your heart into a million tiny pieces.
    â€œThen there are the passive-aggressive agents who realize that no one wants to hear anything bad about their writing, so they just say nice things to everyone, then never call them back. I’ve had both and I don’t know which is worse.”
    â€œIt depends if you like the bandage pulled off quickly or slowly,” LuAnne said.
    â€œThere’s a third kind, right?” I said.
    â€œA third?” Heather said.
    â€œAn agent who is actually looking for a book to sell.”
    They were both quiet for a moment, then LuAnne said, “It could happen.”
    Heather nodded. “Could happen.”
    I felt like a naive child being told that there is no Santa Claus.

    The conversation with the two women pretty much crushed any remaining vestige of hope I still had in getting published. I knew there was a lot of competition out there—anyone who’s ever walked through a bookstore knows that—but it was soul crushing to realize that forevery one of those published authors on the shelf, there were at least a thousand more like me who wanted their job. How could I have been so naive? How could I have wasted my father’s