Mirror, Mirror…

“…who is the greatest writer of them all? Not me.”

August 2019

A year after typing The End to my novel When a Crow Flies and having submitted the book to sixty-two publishers and literary agents across Canada and the U.S., I received nineteen polite (not prompt) rejections. Despite this, my dream of one day being published remained vivid and attainable. With each rejection I felt, at the very least, that I was maturing from an arrogant wannabe writer into a more humbled one.

One sunny afternoon, I swung by the post office to grab the mail. As I carefully pulled out the flyers and bills mercilessly jammed into the small mail slot, a package notice slip fell out and fluttered to the floor. Clutching the stack of mangled mail to my chest, I bent down and picked it up. Flipping it over, I read my full name and frowned. Had I ordered something too large for my P.O. box? Or was I expecting an important document that required my full legal name? I wondered as I casually went to stand in line.

The pretty pink-haired lady behind the counter smiled back at me as she took the slip and disappeared through a gap in the wall. Moments later, she reappeared and unceremoniously dropped an 8 x 10 white manila envelope loudly on the counter in between us.

I stood frozen. It was all I could do but just stare at the return address label.

“Everything okay?” she asked after a lengthy, awkward moment of silence.

“Yep.” I nodded my thanks, then snatched up the envelope. It was from a publisher!

I dashed out the door.

Once buckled in, I told myself not to look at the envelope that now taunted me from the passenger seat where I had tossed it.

Don’t look at it!

Just drive!

Don’t you dare open it here!

Not in the crowded post office parking lot!

This was it!

My moment!

Somehow, I managed to maneuver through the congested parking lot and then drive through city traffic while my heart pounded wildly in my chest.

Focus! Pay attention!

Don’t you dare get into an accident!

With my car safely slammed into park, I bolted up the front porch steps, crashed through the front door, and dropped the bundle of mail onto the kitchen island. I retraced my steps back out to the front deck and fell onto the hot cushions of my rocking chair, which had been basking in the summer sun all day. I placed the envelope on my lap.

First, I ran my hands over its smooth surface while my mind screamed: Someone read my book! Someone out there in the publishing world finally believed in me! It felt like I was standing on the threshold of my dream, with the only thing left for me to do was—leap across it.

I ripped open the envelope and held a navy-blue folder in my shaky hands. On the front, written in shiny gold letters, was the publishing company’s name. I flipped it open and pulled out the precious documents. My eyes darted back and forth, devouring the memo paper-clipped to the front.

My stomach did a perfect somersault as I read the first two lines: “In reviewing your captivating manuscript, our editorial team was so impressed… we would like to offer you…”

Then, “…by signing the attached contract, you agree to pay. . .”

Wait… what? I read that part again. And again. This publisher wanted me to pay them?!

WTH?!

I took a deep breath and slowly read the entire contract from front to back. When I was done, I was deflated and disappointed. This was not even close to what I had envisioned in my dreams. After all the hours and hard work, I had put into writing my book, I was to pay them? It didn’t make any sense. I roughly shuffled the pages back together, shoved them back into the thick file folder, and mercilessly jammed the contract back into the envelope.

Later that night, I Googled the company. I had been emailing queries to publishers/literary agents for almost a year now. It was hard to, off the top of my head, remember them all. And that’s when I stumbled across the two dirty words that every wannabe writer should know: Vanity Publishers.

A vanity publisher, also known as a vanity press, is a company that publishes books for a fee paid by up front by the “author”. Vanity publishers were the exact opposite of traditional publishers, and they don’t typically help with marketing or distribution.

I had no idea these fake publishing companies even existed. Their business model solely built on preying on the vanity of aspiring writers—writers who dreamed of one day holding a hard-copy of their book in their hands. Their mission was to lure in wannabe writers by targeting a writer’s ego and then feed off their vanity.

Lately, my vanity was the only thing I had left to hold on to.

This revelation prompted me to revisit and carefully review my submission spreadsheet, cross-checking each row against those two dirty words.

As I deleted each one, I thought to myself: When you dream of one day owning a Porsche, why would you settle for buying an old beater?

I did (promptly) respond to their fake publishing offer by composing a sarcastic email—under 500 words—politely declining their very generous offer in giving me the opportunity to pay them to publish my book.

The End.

Coming up next: I Give Up! (spoiler alert: I kind of did.).