Monday, April 9, 2012

from THe Creative Penn: On the Importance of Persistence

. Tips For Writers: On the Importance of Persistence
by Joanna Penn on April 7, 2012


If you shop in the Amazon bestseller list for Thriller and Mystery (like I do), you’ll see a number of Michael Wallace books there. Michael has several great books with the Amazon thriller imprint, Thomas Mercer, but it hasn’t always been this way. Today he shares some of his journey with us.



The importance of persistence

I could wallpaper a room with rejection letters.

If I printed electronic rejections I could wallpaper two more rooms. Altogether, I have collected more than 1,500 rejection letters from magazines, publishers, and agents. In fact, I’m still collecting rejection letters, even though my indie novels have sold roughly 80,000 copies and I have paired my indie career with a more traditional contract through Amazon’s Thomas Mercer thriller line. My book, The Righteous, has been ranked as high as #5 in the overall store on Amazon UK and as high as #20 in the US. Nevertheless, my agent recently shopped my World War II thriller and while I had some publisher interest, I also had editors give me those dreaded “I like this, but. . .” responses.


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Click on The Creative Penn title at the top of this post to read the rest of Michael Wallace's journey.
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