.

I have long accepted the fact that the talent to sell things is simply not part of my personality or skill set. Many years ago, so many that the event lay in the last century, during a job interview for a telephone customer representative position with a cable company I was tasked with selling the interviewer on ‘buying’ an ink pen from the desk. I failed and I did not get the position. When I have worked retail, it has always been the straight-forward cashier role, never a position that required me to upsell or convince anyone that any particular product is what they really needed or desired.  The closest I have ever come to that sort of service was working in a video rental store and recommending films to customers when they asked, but even then, that was always based on what the customer told me about their previous tastes.

It is with terrible dismay that I have come to the conclusion that this failure to ‘sell’ people may also be my greatest stumbling block as I seek traditional publishing for my novels.

A recent reply from an agent that passed on my 80s, gay, cinephile, southern California horror novel read in part, ‘ I’m afraid I didn’t feel as though your pitch and concept were quite strong enough for me to confidently present in today’s market’.

The query process, where an author sends off an introductory letter along with the opening pages of the novel is in fact a sales pitch. I recognize this. You are trying to sell two things simultaneously, the novel in question as a marketable book ready to compete with others in its genre for shelf space and sales, and yourself as a professional, able to work with others such as agents, editors, and the like, in the publishing world.  There is the rub, that is get past the gate, to transition into that world I need to sell myself and I need to sell my writing, utilizing the very skill that I most suck at.

Now, being aware of the problem, knowing its existence, is the problem half solved, but only half. This is forcing me to reframe precisely how I approach the crafting of query letters, recognizing what they truly are and just how far my skills fall short in that area. I can’t very well quit, that is simply not an option, so I have no choice but to try, and no matter what that little Muppet says, there is a ‘try’. It is time to become a salesman and hope that I am not in that damned play.