Getting to a Contract: Part One of Publishing an Essay Collection

by Sandra Gail Lambert

Getting to a Contract: Part One of Publishing an Essay Collection

Sandra Gail Lambert

On December 21st, 2022, I signed a contract with the University of Georgia Press to publish my next book. Here's what led to that moment. This essay won't be lyrical or filled with clever turns of phrase but rather be more of a litany of details interspersed with digressions. I hope the information is of interest and of use.

My Withered Legs and Other Essays will be my third book, and I'll be seventy-one when it's published. I was sixty-two and sixty-six when the first two came out. With each manuscript that ended up published, there was a long process of first trying to use it to attract an agent, giving up on that, submitting to presses that don't require an agent, and then finally, usually five years in and after many, many rejections, getting a positive response.

This time it was different. The book was not planned in the same way as the others. I mean, I had some essays accumulated, but when COVID hit in 2020, I abandoned them. I stopped revising, completing, or sketching out new ones. These were the days when it became more public than usual that disabled and old people, first in Italy and then here, were deemed not worth the effort or expense of basic care. People like me were dying from this. And not just dying, but dying alone, separated from our loved ones. That scared me more than anything. So those pre-COVID essays, they all seemed, if not trite, then at least beside the point. I did write and then submit a few in-the-moment essays but they were poorly constructed, rage-filled screechings.

Instead, for the first time, I wrote short stories, fantastical ones. A waiting room is filled with a collective of disabled characters ready to be called forth by authors. An old woman, an artist, escapes the cruelties of an increasingly oppressive government by flying to another world. A tropospheric gathering of disabled beings from around the universe gather to help an Earth woman, disabled and desperately ill, find joy and avoid being triaged into oblivion. These are the stories that made sense to me, the stories I could write.  

In the summer of 2021, there was hope. Vaccines were available. The COVID numbers dropped. I applied to the Sewanee Writers' Conference. It would be my first excursion out into the world that wasn't some variation on a private cabin in the woods. And I applied as a creative nonfiction writer. I gotta tell you, I felt like a fraud doing this. But my accomplishments that would look good on an application were in this genre. I was accepted as a Fellow which meant, most importantly to me, that I was not required to submit pages to be workshopped. Those old, discarded, crappy, half-done essays would not be exposed beyond the application.

Except that I did have to present work to my faculty person so we could have a meeting about it. I mean, I wanted to. Sort of. She wrote so beautifully. This was such an opportunity. At our meeting, she was clear that some of the essays had major flaws. But she said it in a way that showed me how to proceed. And she said my work had value. And she told me why in ways that made sense to me. And she said she had known and appreciated my writing for years. And right then I had one of those moments of confidence and renewal that made my face flush. A week of being among writers again and listening to and workshopping brilliant work, had prepared me to sit at that table with this writer I respected and be encouraged.

I returned home and wrote essays. One after another. I reviewed the notes from that transformative meeting and used the feedback. I found the abandoned ones and reanimated them. I pulled out my breast cancer notes from four years before and organized them into a new essay that copied the form of an essay we'd workshopped in our conference group. Some essays I put aside. Others I re-imagined.

Eight months later I had enough pieces with a high enough word-count to have a manuscript. I wrote a decent query letter. As was my wont, I sent it to literary agents. After just nine rejections, I decided to stop querying agents. Forever. I was almost seventy. It was time to let that go. But there had been a change in the publishing world since the last time I shopped around a manuscript. What used to be independent presses were no longer accepting un-agented submissions. I mean, they were still calling themselves "independent," and it made me surly that they did. But I found a few publishers like Roxane Gay Books, Belt Publishing, and the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize where the timing of their open submissions worked. And my last book had been published by the University of Nebraska Press and it had been a good experience. University presses don't require agents. So in June, I submitted there again and also to Ohio University Press and West Virginia University Press. From my experience, it would be three to six months before I could expect to hear back.

In August, I came across the University of Georgia's nonfiction imprint, Crux. I read the submission guidelines. They were like so many of the university press guidelines which are set up for more academic, researched manuscripts. My unfamiliarity with that world means I'm not at ease with the, well, verbiage that is useful for completing the requested forms. But I noticed that the website included a short message from the acquiring editor—"To inquire about publishing in the series, please contact:" So I sent a quick email, not even a full query, off to her. And that's how it started, this wild rush of email exchanges that led to a contract.

Hold on, because in "publishing time" this is a ride at lightspeed.

Saturday, August 27th 2022 - I send off that short paragraph about my manuscript and my writing to the acquiring editor of Crux at the University of Georgia Press.

Wednesday, August 31st - Just four days later, she responds saying she's a "big fan" of my work and to send her the current manuscript, was it out to other places, that if all goes well, the next step will be to send it to readers. With glee, I message quotes from the email to writer friends so they can squeal with me. A gazillion emojis are exchanged. The phone calls begin with shrieking rather than hello. I shriek back.

Thursday, September 9th - I dither over the order of the essays one more time, restrain myself from a complete rewrite, and send off the manuscript.

Tuesday, September 13th - The editor tells me she's sent it out to their readers. This is publishing on amphetamines.  

Wednesday, October 12th - The first reader responds enthusiastically. I have my now just yearly routine post-cancer mammogram.

Monday, October 31st - The second reader responds enthusiastically. The editor asks me to send a response letter to the readers' comments so she can present it to their faculty committee. She is enthusiastic. There is so much enthusiasm. This has never happened for me before. It makes me worried. I look for problems. I can't find any.

Tuesday, November 8th - I send my letter. It has to say when I'll have the manuscript ready. I don't say this to the editor, but I'm not sure because that mammogram has come back hinky and they're making me wait for what seems forever to return for a second one and as any person who has had cancer would, I'm sure there's a reoccurrence. I look up survival stats for Stage Four breast cancer. But I make up a date for the letter. And as a gesture toward a future, I contact the publicist I worked with on my last book and give him the news of a likely next book. I don't have the funds for a full campaign but is he available for a mini one? Such great news, he says. And of course he'll work with me. All this enthusiasm. It can be unnerving. Everything is unnerving right now. My wife, Pam, gives me a little lecture that includes the words acceptance and openness. I think sarcastic things, mostly about myself, but don't say them.

Monday, November 14th - The editor wants me to send a fuller description of the project for a board memo. (So far I've never even sent her the full query much less a full proposal.)

Wednesday, November 16th - Two days later! The editor says there's been an early meeting and she is able to offer me an advanced contract with an actual advance (which is not the norm with university presses in my experience)! We exchange emails full of more mutual enthusiasm and mutually being thrilled and she says she's doing a happy dance. I am being treated like a regular person by a publisher. I keep looking for problems. I still can't find any. She does ask me to say again when the manuscript can be ready. I don't say I'm having a biopsy the next day. But I add a month on to what I actually need just in case.

Thursday, December 1st - The contract manager sends the contract for my approval. Okay, I think, maybe this is the problems part. But since my biopsy came back negative, I am now okay with problems. I'm a member of the Author's Guild and they offer a contract reviewing service. I send it to them.

Tuesday, December 6th - The lawyer from the Author's Guild responds with suggestions. And we find out (Is this some kind of brutal joke?) that Pam needs a breast biopsy.  

Thursday, December 8th - I send the contract back. Among my requested revisions are to define a "competing work more clearly," at the end of the contract have the rights automatically revert to me rather than "upon request," add a specific date by which the book would be published, decrease the minimum royalty check from $100 to $20, increase the ten author copies to twenty, and to retain the audiobook rights. I'd researched and found Crux didn't often provide audiobooks. And for me, it's an important part of the accessibility of my work. The next days are anxious ones where I am certain they will decide I'm too much trouble. They will think I'm unreasonable. Pam will have cancer. They will cancel the contract. They will ghost me. I wait. A whole week goes by. My sense of how long it takes a legal department at a publisher to return an email has become unrealistic and I know this, but still I worry. I should have just signed the dang thing as is. 

Friday, December 16th - I'm sure I'll hear nothing before the University shuts down for the weekend. Then the contract manager sends an email saying, among other reassuring things, "some of your suggestions are doable and some I may need to modify or might not be possible . . ." I cry with relief. It is such a kindness for her to have sent the email.

Monday, December 19th - The contract manager sends back a list of what they can do and not do and other in-between suggestions. I agree with everything so very, very fast.

Wednesday, December 21st - The contract is signed by both parties.

Saturday, December 24th - Pam has breast cancer. Despite the extended date I gave the press, I know I need to finish the edits as quickly as possible before all the medical appointments begin, before the surgery. Most days I disappear into the writing room. The manuscript is done and turned in ten days later.

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