A Book Deal and Icing on the Cake

Finding a press is a long-haul game!

I’d been sending my manuscript around to publishers and agents for over a year, when a writing colleague suggested I try NDSU Press. She’d been published there and had nothing but good to say about working with them. In August of 2020, I sent the press a query and my full manuscript.

Finding a press is a long-haul game, so I kept editing my work, and sending it around.

Four months later, long after the fall colors were just a gorgeous memory

Suzzanne Kelley, Editor-in-Chief at NDSU Press, sent me an email.

Dear Jill,

I so enjoyed reading your memoir! Your personal stories immersed in history work beautifully, and I am so touched by sublime instances, including your perfect conclusion.  I would like to publish The Clean Daughter: A Cross-Continental Memoir.                                                                                                                My next step is to secure two blind peer reviewers if you are still inclined to proceed. 

I wrote back promptly with a big YES! I’d love to proceed.

Suzzanne sent my manuscript out to two reviewers.

They each read the entire book and filled out a form of grueling, thoughtful questions. Here are just a few of them.  

o   What is your overall assessment of the project?

o   Are there topics to be added, lengthened, deleted to make the work complete?

o   Is it clear and interesting?

o   Does this work make a substantive contribution to regional studies?

o   Are there any other publications of this type with which this text might compete?

Hats off to the unpaid book reviewers who did this difficult work!

The snow fell. The sun rose and set. The days passed. And I waited.

A few months later, the book reviews came back giving my manuscript glowing reviews.

For the next step in the process, Suzzanne sent the reviews and my manuscript to the NDSU Press Editorial Advisory Board members to read, consider, and take a final vote.

Eight months after I’d sent NDSU my manuscript, in March of 2021, I got another email.

Dear Jill,

It is with great pleasure that I inform you that our NDSU Press

Editorial Advisory Board voted UNANIMOUSLY this afternoon

to certify your manuscript, The Clean Daughter: A Cross-Cultural

Memoir, for publication. In a few days, I will send you our contract

and our Author’s Questionnaire.

I look forward to seeing your work through production

and available on the shelves in libraries and bookstores

everywhere.

Sincerely,

Suzzanne

I wrote back to confirm a great, big, gigantic YES!!

A few weeks later, I opened my mailbox and found the NDSU Press Contract in it.

I sat down to sign it. A day to remember! My birthday. Signing my NDSU Press contract was icing on the cake.

I’m ecstatic to say I am going to be an NDSU Press Author!

I owe so many people thanks for having made it this far! Many, many thanks to Suzzanne, to the readers, and the board at NDSU Press. Many, many thanks to the women in my writing club who have worked with me for four years to see this book birthed. Many thanks to you who read my first book and encouraged me to keep writing.

Full of thanks. Full of wonder.

Gratefully,

Jill