One minute you’re staring vacantly at your computer fleetingly wondering how long it’s been since you blinked, and the next you’re reading an email from your agent telling you that a Korean publisher has made an offer on one of your books. That’s what I’m happy to say happened to me, anyway.
My book “Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang: Why I Do the Things I Do, by God (as told to John Shore)” (I know: long title) has been sold to Seoul, South Korea-based Miraesa Publishing. (I don’t know much about the publisher, besides that they’re Joel Osteen’s Korean house.)
When the book comes out they’ll mail me five copies. I will put them on my shelf next to my five copies of the German-language edition of Penguins, which I also can’t read.
Penguins was one “Send” button away from never getting published at all. Every mainstream and Christian publisher known to man had rejected it. The ABA (American Booksellers Association) publishers had said they loved it, but were afraid of it angering Christians. (“I personally love this book, but pissing off Christians is always more trouble than it’s worth,” commented an editor so famous it’s a testament to my agent she even read the thing.) They also said they had no idea how to market it. (Can’t blame them there, either: Penguins is the only book I’ve ever heard of that cannot be classified as either fiction or nonfiction. Tru dat!) The CBA (Christian Booksellers Association) publishers said they couldn’t touch Penguins because it put words into the mouth of God. (And then, of course, five or six of the Christian publishers who had seen and rejected my book on those “blasphemous” grounds immediately published books of their own that also put words into the mouth of God — but were written by authors much more famous than I. But do I think those publishers read my book, saw an idea that worked, and then paid another writer to write a knock-off of it because they knew they could make more money off that author than they could off Totally Unknown me? Does every day of the week in in “y”?)
For about a year I had carefully tracked every publisher to whom my ABA agent, my CBA agent, and I had submitted Penguins. The total was at 71 publishers. There basically was no publisher left who hadn’t rejected it. My agents had reasonably given up on it months before.
In the wee hours of one morning I sat deeply slumped in my office chair, staring mindlessly at my computer, trolling, as had long become my habit, for any publisher, anywhere, with any credibility whatsoever, who hadn’t already seen and bounced my book. Through blurry eyes I saw that I had come across the website for Church Publishing, Inc. They had a little area where you could punch in a question to them. Instead of a question, I dumped the entire proposal for my book into that blank white square. I didn’t care. I knew it was hopeless anyway. And I knew — I really, right there, felt the truth of it — that this would be my last attempt to get Penguins published. I wouldn’t submit it again. It was over. There was virtually no one left. My book had failed.
Turns out this guy read the email I so sloppily sent at 1:30 a.m. that night.
And now here it is, three years later, and I find out that besides having come out in German, Penguins is also coming out in Korean.
That documentary was right. Penguins really do know how to survive.
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