Twenty Seven & Counting

In the month of January, I sent out forty five queries to agents about my upcoming novel Land of the Elements. Since then, I’ve heard back from (you guessed it) twenty seven of them declining the opportunity to represent LotE to publishers in one form or another. The rest simply haven’t responded. Most of the rejection emails say the same thing: 

“Thanks for the opportunity, but I don’t think I’m the right fit. Writing is subjective though, so don’t get discouraged!” 

It’s hard to stay encouraged when you keep getting the same generic “thanks, but no thanks” response. But as one iron in the fire seemed to cool, another heated up. 

In the month of February, my band recorded The Bards Crawl—a five-song album featuring covers of traditional Irish folk songs. On a particularly cold day late in the month, we went to a beach on the Chesapeake Bay and filmed a music video for the lead track: The Wellerman. We wrapped our final shot, us walking away from the beach, as it began to rain on us in 45 degree weather. We simply kept on walking towards the car and closed the doors just as it began to really pour. The shoot was frantic and freezing, but that miserably cold and windy shoot turned into something we never expected.

In the week after the shoot, I cut together multiple iterations of the video, hoping that I could get a good enough cut out of what little footage I had (the shoot had only lasted about twenty minutes due to the weather and lack of sunlight). I managed to put together a video that we were all happy with, and on March 5th we released it to the world. 

And the world responded. 

Since its release, our video for The Wellerman has (wanna guess?) twenty seven thousand views and counting, including over five hundred likes and dozens of comments and subscriptions from everywhere. We figured that we were simply riding the popularity wave of the song itself, but the comments we’ve gotten spoke to something else:

“Tôi yêu thích bạn và bài hát của bạn!” (Vietnamese: I love you and your song!)

“Baaardzo fajnie.” (Polish: Sooo cool)

“знать бы еще про что поют” (Russian: What else do they sing about?)

“Heck yes!” (English: Heck yes!)

We were stunned by the response, especially in those first two weeks. In the year of our channel’s existence, only two of our previous twenty four videos had garnered over a thousand views. In mere weeks, The Wellerman had more than doubled our entire channel’s total views and showed no signs of stopping.

So we went back out a month later and, with the help of my wonderful wife, filmed a video for Drunken Sailor. It was still bitterly cold and particularly windy, which made filming tricky. Looking anywhere but into the wind put Kevin’s hair in his face, but the sun was behind us, making lighting a challenge. Eventually we found a decent angle and just went for it. 

Thinking that it probably wouldn’t do as well as The Wellerman, we released the Drunken Sailor video on April 3rd. In barely more than two weeks it’s pulled in over thirteen thousand views and over four hundred likes. More comments have come in as well, proving to us that maybe we weren’t just lucky in choosing The Wellerman a month ago:

“Beautiful song, congratulations from Mexico”

“This is really good! Greetings from Ukraine!”

“Great voices, hope to see more stuff from you all!” 

Before releasing these music videos, our YouTube channel had around fifty subscribers, most of which were friends and family (they’re your first fans!). Now we’re knocking on the door of three hundred, gaining more every day, and I personally know none of the new arrivals. It’s not famous-YouTuber levels of engagement, but it’s thrilling to watch it grow nonetheless. In May, we’ll release our twenty seventh video, stay tuned! 

All during this time, as our two new videos get viewed nearly a thousand times a day each, I get more “thanks, but no thanks” emails from agents that said the same thing:

“Publishing is such a subjective industry; so, please don’t be discouraged.”

“As you know, this is a very subjective business, and, even though it's not right for me, it might be the perfect fit for another agent.”

“I do not have the enthusiasm for this project to be the right person to champion it forward. Please keep in mind that publishing is highly subjective. Do not be discouraged!”

It has been hard to hear that my writing isn’t resonating enough with anyone I had sent it to. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into bringing to life a story near and dear to my heart. But just as the agents have all said “no thanks” to my writing, people around the world are saying “give me more” to our videos simply because we put them out there.

So that’s what I’ll eventually do with Land of the Elements. Just as with The Last Wizard and Kingdom’s End, Land of the Elements will be self-published (unless an agent swoops in at the eleventh hour, but I’m not holding my breath). I’m going to put my work out there. You never know who’s going to find it and enjoy it.

By the way, want to guess the number of reviews The Last Wizard has on Amazon?

JB6