It’s the stuff of dreams, you send off your unsolicited manuscript to one or more coveted publishing houses and, after a few months of silence (in some cases even sooner!), your work is picked up from the hundreds of others languishing in the mountainous slush pile, to begin its long journey to publication. Out of the many unsuccessful pitches to sieve through, occasionally publishers find gold. ArtsHub speaks to a number of authors and publishers about the lucky happenstance when a manuscript finds a home.
Natasha Sholl, meanwhile, ultimately had success with Ultimo Press, also for her debut book, a memoir, Found, Wanting. She originally set up a potential publisher spreadsheet to record the entire submission process. ‘No one hates Excel more than me, but it gave me some distance from the process (and the illusion of control). My theory was that if I had a rejection, it wouldn’t sting as much if I had a potential “yes” still in the works. It also meant that if a publisher requested the full manuscript, in the next cover letter I would include a note that Publisher X had requested the manuscript and it was now on general submission. It’s important for transparency, but a bit of FOMO can’t hurt either.’
