Is It Normal to Sell Manuscripts That Never Get Published?

A writer friend asked me a question a while back, and my Mentors for Rent partner, Lisa Bullard, and I decided to answer it by video.

Oh dear.

It’s a long story, but after an hours-long Mentors for Rent meeting yesterday, we ended up recording this little video on my iPhone in the stairwell of the Maple Grove Transit Center. Yep, the bus station! It was very windy outside, and there was tons of traffic noise, so we had to find a very quick indoors’spot to give this a try.

And here is the result.

Awkward!

Yes, Youtube gives you three screen capture options, and that is actually the least awkward of the three. Hard to believe. Lisa, by the way, looked normal in all three. Oi.

We might do more of these, since this is the kind of question writers ask in Mentors for Rent sessions, where we do critiques, Q&A, career planning, etc.?Maybe we’ll (meaning I’ll) get a little more videogenic each time. Please don’t send in questions yet, though. This is just a trial, and we’re going to have to figure out our system if we decide to do more. When we’re ready for questions, we’ll call for them on our Facebook page. So we hope you’ll go Like our Facebook Page!

We summarize the question in the video before we answer it, but if you would like to see the entire question, here it is:

I recently received contributor’s copies of a magazine for a puzzle that I sold 10 years, 5 months ago. How funny is that? Truth be told, I’ve sold this publisher dozens of puzzles that I’ve never seen published. I’ve been paid for them all, and I have ample puzzle publishing credits, so I’ve never really cared. I did inquire–three times, many years ago–about if and where they were being pubbed, but I never got an answer.

However, this has gotten me to thinking about all the pieces I’ve had accepted and paid for but not published, and I wonder if my experience is normal. There have been quite a few! I had a picture book manuscript contracted and advance paid in 2005. The illustrator sat on it for several years, and then decided she didn’t want to do it because she concluded it wasn’t financially worthwhile. The purchasing editor was long gone and there the story ends. I had another magazine piece in an adult magazine purchased and not published. The editor eventually returned it to me, the rights and hard copy of the manuscript.

A second similar piece (different magazine) was not pubbed in the magazine as planned but put on the website instead. That one kind of ticked me off because I would have done things differently for the web. It wasn’t a tragedy, though.

Several times now, I’ve had talks of projects that get stopped just before contracts are signed. In fact, last summer I had serious contract negotiations–several phone calls, the publisher lawyer called in for one–and finally an agreement, only then to have the publisher decide to change direction. As of December, I was told they’d be in touch in the “new year,” but they didn’t specify which new year. I haven’t heard a thing.

Do you think this is normal???

Go watch the video to see our take on it!