The first Adventures of Pochi book took years to write. The reason was because it spent most of that time as an unopened file on my hard drive. The writing that paid the bills always took precedent, so the first Pochi series book was shelved time and time again.
If you haven’t read previous posts about the series, the Pochi series of books will follow Pochi, a stuffed dog, and his owner James, around the world to countries and cities as diverse as Japan, Australia, Moscow, Israel, the Africa continent and South and Central America. In each book, Pochi learns about the native culture, some words from the local language and some common phrases. He also will learn about points of interest, local foods and the destination’s history.
When the manuscript was finally pulled out and the dust was blown off, I worked over a course of months to finish the final four or five chapters. In the first book, Pochi visits Japan, and as a book that is only 9-chapters long, much of the book was written in recent months.
When the book was finished, I decided I wanted to go the traditional publishing route and dutifully sent out a query letter to a dozen and a half literary agents. It took a lot of research to find that many agents who were interested in representing chapter books. It was then a matter of personalizing the letters and getting each sent out.
I had high hopes that I would hear from one of those agents that this first book, and the premise of the entire series of books, would resonate and excite them.
One by one, the agents responded with the same form response; “although you seem to have a good idea for a book, it is not a good fit for me.” Although I am paraphrasing, every response followed that basic format.
A Seed of Insight Planted
There was one agent though, who took a little extra time to leave a couple of brief comments about her opinion of the three chapters of the book that I included with the query letter. As a writer who is always open to learned feedback, those two sentences were gold.
That prompted me to do what I should have done in the first place; I hired a professional editor. This should have been my first step. Instead, I went about sending out all of those query letters and the first three chapters of the book to all of those agents. It would have saved a lot of work.
The editor agreed with the brief comments of the agent. Developmentally, the first portion of the book needed to be fleshed out more. James’ relationship with Pochi needed to be developed more thoroughly. There were some elements left out that might be interesting and helpful to the reader, even if the reader is 7-10 years old and not focused on character development or small details in the story line.
Also, many authors make use of beta readers for feedback early in the process. I did not take that step either. Those things are now being done late in the process and out of step with the correct approach.
When the first chapters in the book are rewritten and feedback is gathered from some beta readers, then the Pochi series of books will get back on track and the query letters will go out once again. Hopefully, literary agents don’t believe in the old adage about a person never getting a second chance at a first impression.
Pochi needs to travel and the thousands of future readers of the series need to go on that adventure and learn about the world.
What should a debut author learn from this experience? Before an agent will work to sell a book to a publishing house, it has to be well worth the effort. That means that the author has to also put in the effort to make it a great book before the query letter is sent.
