Road to Getting Published

I'm behind on posts for a couple really good reasons.  I made a move of choice from PA to NC this month and have been immersed in getting settled in a new home.  Equally important and possibly even more exciting is that I've been offered two publishing contracts for my first romantic mystery.  Three publishers expressed interest in the manuscript and provided specific suggestions for revisions.  One publisher sent a review by an editor who liked my book and another by a reviewer who didn't like it.  After reading them, I couldn't tell which was which - they were harsh but they were right.  Once I got over feeling offended, I went to work implementing their ideas and resubmitted.  I received a contract from one within a month and the second a few weeks later.  I knew all along I wanted to be accepted by the traditional publisher who will put out the book in both print and e-form.

The publisher complimented me for submitting the original manuscript and revised versions that were well-edited. I like to edit my own work so I'm certain I read it at least a hundred times and it paid off.  All these advice articles about submitting clean manuscripts are true. The last thing you want to do is turn off an editor or publisher because of misspellings, funky punctuation, missing words, sentences that don't make sense, and so on.   Don't shortchange editing.