So April brought me four rejection letters. Not good. I mean I guess it's better than no response at all. At least I know where I stand. But i think I now have more rejections than chances left. I am still waiting to hear from about a dozen British publishers. They generally do promise to respond, even if it takes a while. Not like American publishers, who generally say they can take 6 months or longer to respond, and they will only get back to you if they are interested. So you kind of send them stuff as if putting it out into the ether. Then you forget about it, and if anything comes back it's a bonus.

But back to the concrete rejections. It's hard not to feel a little despondent. Now the chances of an offer diminish progressively more rapidly, as each of the few last chances come back negative. I hesitate to type that word - "negative" - because it's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to abide by the law of attraction - what you put out there is what comes back. Think positive. Create your reality. Think it into being. Visualise yourself at book signings. That sort of thing. I started out that way. Really. I was pretty confident. Now? Not so much.

On the up side, as you'll see from the title of this post, I did get another offer. My fourth "partnership" or "contribution-based" offer. I'm waiting for them to send the contract which has all the details. I think the amount will be similar to Offer 3, which was about £2100, or about R22 000. Which is much, much more attractive than the first 2 "offers", which wanted contributions of nearly £6000 and £9000. As if. £2000 is actually something I can consider. Take some boodle out of the old home loan. Back myself. I looked into self-publishing here in SA and it would have cost about R30 000 upwards to print 500 to 1000 copies. And I wouldn't have had any marketing or distribution resources. So the offer is actually not that bad.

Problem is the 2 houses that have made affordable offers have had some bad press on the www. They've been called nasty names, and had people bad-mouthing them. Maybe not sticks and stones, but it's not pretty. Hoo boy. What's a writer to do?