Eddie Muller writes:
I sold my first non-fiction submission, on the very first try, without an agent. That’s because it was about sex. I got paid more to design to book than I did to write it. But it got me in the door and established me as a reliable professional. That led to my first two books on film noir, also sold sans agent. At the time I worried about being taken advantage of, but I now know that I did as well as I could have. Everything I learned came in handy when I did get an agent. The business wasn’t a mystery, and I felt fairly sure that I knew the score. Then, of course, you learn that knowing the score and being able to do something about it are entirely different things.
My first novel, The Distance, started as a magazine article, pitched to Sports Illustrated and rejected. It grew into an ungainly 600+ page opus of pretentious literary aspiration. Then it got carved into genre fiction. All that took about seven years. It took me a year-and-a-half to find an agent, even with two books under my belt. It took her another year-and-a-half to sell it.
What’s the lesson for an unpublished writer? It's pretty simple: the world isn’t begging for your fiction. Be prepared to take your beatings and keep on going.
Eddie Muller’s first novel, The Distance, won the Shamus and Gumshoe Awards as Best First Novel of 2002, and was nominated for Anthony, Barry, and Macavity Awards in the same category. His non-fiction books have twice been nominated for Edgar Awards, and last year he was nominated for the Anthony for Best Short Story. The Distance is now at in paperback from UglyTown.
