Ann Brandt's Journey to Publication

An interesting journey to publication that starts with self-publishing, travels through mainstream publishing with HarperCollins and ends as an ebook. Ann Brandt tells how she published Crowfoot Ridge"

Of the eight agent responses from my submissions, seven were encouraging, but rejections none-the-less. One was a request to send fifty pages of "Crowfoot Ridge" to Jillian Manus. Three months later her rejection arrived. I did a lot of rewriting after the conference, then proceeded with a small press in NC and self-published. The jacket photo they wanted to use belonged on a Mad Magazine cover. I contacted DeWitt Jones, a photographer/speaker at Maui and asked for a mountain scene. He provided one for four hundred dollars. When the book came out I sent a few copies to him as a thank you.

He sent one to his good friend, Jillian Manus, who read it and called to ask if she could represent me. She had no memory of our previous encounter. I signed her contract and she put the book out on auction giving the publishers eight hours to respond. HarperCollins won the auction. They put me through months of rewriting with editors from many disciplines: story, dialog, grammar, and legal. Jillian asked once how I'd gotten a DeWitt Jones photo and went on to tell me he can receive $10,000 for one. In fact HarperCollins said they could not afford one of his photos and provided an in-house painting for the jacket they published in 1999. "Crowfoot Ridge" was sold in several countries, translated into German and French, and we had a few nibbles from the film industry. The e-book debuts on Kindle this month.