I plan to share my journey to write my book, You Can't Google Purpose, with you all. The purpose is to remind myself that rejection is NOT failure....if I listen to the 'why'. It just a numbers game (how many agents I reach) and every time I "fail" it just brings me one step closer to success.After writing the first draft of my book proposal in February, 8 of my blog readers read it on a private blog and gave me feedback. Thank you! I completed the next draft in March and as of April 1st I started reaching out to agents. Here's rejection letter #1 and my interpretation of how I can do better next time.
Hi Jullien,
Thanks so much for sharing your proposal with us. [AGENT NAME] read it last night, and let me know that unfortunately it’s not a good fit for our publishing program at Rodale. We only publish a few titles a year in this category and we have to be extremely selective. She did share a few thoughts with me that you might want to consider before circulating your proposal. Editorially, she was concerned about whether you have Google's permission to borrow from their brand so freely. Also, while she was impressed with your education, she noticed that you don't have any psychology or social work credentials, which will make things a little tougher… Are there things that you can do to overcome these objections in your proposal when you send it out to agents?
I hope this feedback is helpful to you! A few things I've noticed that we really care about when getting proposals -- 1) is the proposal well-thought out, proof-read and put together with care? 2) how well does the author know the competition and what makes their book different? 3) how strong is the author's platform (ability to get media, particularly national)?
Best of luck and let me know how your search goes! If there's anything else that I can do, please let me know.
Things I need to do:
- Reach out to Google to explore the extent to which I can use their name in the title. I visited their corporate site yesterday and sent a request for permission.
- Share my work with the SHAPE after school program and the 8 Principles of Purpose more
- Go get a psychology degree...uuuhhhhh...NO!
- Talk about Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" and how he addresses inner purpose while I address outer purpose.
- Potentially hire a PR firm to get my blog posts placed in different magazines and newspapers, etc
So the letter didn't say whether you actually accomplished the three things they say they look for?...