Tales of Success: Part One

 

Righting the Wrongs

Gus Wedderburn’s Quest for Social Justice in Nova Scotia

Marie Riley, $14.95 (pb) 978-1-897426-28-9,

95 pp. Pottersfield Press

 

ABT: Why did you decide to participate in Pitch the Publisher?

MR: I was kind of moving along with this. I wasn’t sure where I was going with it. I needed some feedback, because it’s a lot of work. I figured if three publishers said no way in hell, then I’d give up with the idea.

 

ABT: Did you present an idea, or did you have a manuscript completed?

MR: I had an outline and one chapter.

 

ABT: What did you get out of the event?

MR: Exactly what I was looking for—reassurance that I was on the right track. All three publishers expressed interest and no one said to give it up.

 

ABT: How did you feel about the experience?

MR: Well I felt good! I must’ve signed up early because I was the first one on. When I left, I knew it was worth carrying on with my work.

 

ABT: What was the best advice you got from publishers during your pitch experience?

MR: I’m not sure of any one piece of advice but they were all interested and that gave me motivation to keep on.

 

ABT: What happened next?

MR: I left the first chapter with them. A month, maybe a month and a half later, I got an email from Lesley Choyce [the publisher at Pottersfield Press] saying he was interested in the book and to keep him in the loop. I thought I would be done writing it by June, but of course in June I was still working on it. I emailed Lesley then and he said he was still interested. So I kept working and by the following November, I thought I had shot the ship really. I was at a place where I had to stop it. It was a biography so I could have gone on and on.

 

ABT: Your pitch was picked up—how did this happen?

MR: I heard it could be six months to hear back. In January I emailed [Lesley] again asking if he liked it. He said, I remember, he and his editor “rather liked it”—if they could make it work for all of us. I think by that he meant that it was a very local story and there were questions on how wide the readership would be. By February, I was going back and forth with the editor, Julia Swan. By July it was in layout and the book was back and ready for Word On The Street this year. I couldn’t believe it. The process was much more efficient than I thought it would be. I went back and forth with Julia and was very involved with the process.

 

ABT: Any plans for another book?

MR: Not right now. I’m working on the launch of this book now. I just found out I had my first review in the Anglican Diocesan Times.

 

ABT: What do you have to say to the aspiring writers contemplating making a pitch?

MR: Go for it. I don’t think there’s much to lose, really. I’ve been to three Pitch the Publisher events, my own in 2009 and again in 2010 and 2011 because I knew people who were doing it. Jim and Lesley and Errol [regular publishers on the non-fiction panel] are great, they are not scary. People think they might be, and you might be nervous but they are there to help you and their intention is to help you out as much as they can. They might be critical but they aren’t going to be embarrassingly critical!