The Southern Breeze Region

RESELLING A CANCELLED BOOK

How SCBWI Helped Me

Vicky Alvear Shecter, Author It’s hard enough to sell a project, but when a publisher cancels a book, it’s just heartbreaking. That’s what happened to my second book. One day, I got a nice letter saying they wouldn’t be publishing my manuscript after all. They were closing their doors. And oh, by the way, they wanted their advance back. I was devastated. But after I picked myself up off the pity-potty, I began submitting the book again. I submitted to Boyds Mills Press, flagging myself as an attendee of a Southern Breeze conference where the editor—Larry Rosler—had spoken almost a year before. (Okay, I admit, I pretended not to notice that the six-month window for such submissions had been closed for a while. Still, I wasn’t lying—I had attended. Plus, I figured the worst that could happen was that the manuscript would go to the bottom of the slush pile anyway.) Weeks later, I got a phone call from Larry. He was interested. Would I send him more? Within a couple of months of submitting to him, I had a contract. I had resold the book. CLEOPATRA RULES! THE AMAZING LIFE OF THE ORIGINAL TEEN QUEEN came out this past August. There’s more. In my frenzy of re-submissions, I had sent a query to Cheryl Klein at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic (don’t ask me why since they’re not known for publishing nonfiction). Well into production with Boyds Mills, Cheryl Klein asked to see more of CLEOPATRA RULES! I had, of course, to breathe into a paper bag before I could tell her that it had already been sold. But then I asked if she might she be interested in the YA historical fiction novel I was working on. She liked the pitch. To make a long story short, Cheryl Klein eventually purchased my novel after it went to auction. So, in a roundabout, circuitous way, Southern Breeze was responsible for the sale of my first novel too! Moral of the story: Go to conferences; submit, submit, submit; and never give up.