Dear Beth,

I don’t know Beth Phelan but she organized Monday’s #DVpit, which encouraged marginalized writers to pitch their completed manuscripts to participating agents and editors. I first thought about sending Beth a tweet to express my appreciation for this initiative, but then I thought about writing a longer letter because I have mixed feelings about my experience and wonder what her hopes and expectations were. Until a moment ago, I didn’t realize Beth was a woman of color; another woman of color, Hannah Gomez, called agents out a while back, asking them to solicit work from excluded writers instead of complaining about the lack of submissions. Could white women—who dominate the publishing industry—have come up with these ideas? Of course. But they didn’t (as far as I know). Many of them got on board and that’s encouraging, because we can’t expect different outcomes if industry professionals aren’t willing to change their ways. But when I heard about Hannah’s plan my first thought was, “Agents aren’t enough.” Because agents only take on clients who write material they KNOW they can sell. So if editors—and marketers and sales directors—aren’t on board, too, then what can a handful of well-intentioned agents really achieve?

I wasn’t planning to participate in #DVpit but then I started a new picture book story, “Milo’s Museum,” and figured I might as well share it with the Twittersphere. And that’s what really matters about #DVpit—it was PUBLIC. I pitched four of my twelve unpublished PB manuscripts, and everyone who follows me or that hashtag could see what I have to offer. Librarian Angie Manfredi boldly called out agents on my behalf:

Seven agents and one editor favorited my pitches and I followed up with all of them (incorrectly addressing one query, so no doubt that got deleted immediately; note to self—don’t send queries late at night). I heard from one enthusiastic agent immediately and we made tentative plans to talk in the near future. Some of these agencies are new to me but most of them are not. I’ve queried them more than once over the past decade so what will be different this time around?

This morning I woke up thinking about the role of the publisher. An editor friend explained recently how hard she has to fight for a story she loves, “selling” it to the acquisitions team plus sales and marketing. What if we radically altered the acquisitions process? What if an editor could go straight to her publisher and get a thumbs up or thumbs down—and then the sales and marketing team just had to make it work? What if we removed all the loopholes/excuses that lead to stories by PoC getting shot down? No one has ever told me I can’t write. No one has accused me of being a bad storyteller. It’s almost always been, “This isn’t right for our list” or “There’s no market for this.” Well, what if a publisher issued an executive order—like President Obama getting around a do-nothing Congress: “We’re publishing this book because I said so. It’s now ON our list, so FIND or DEVELOP a market for it.” Imagine how THAT would transform the publishing industry…

In the meantime, I’m grateful to Beth for coming up with such a unique alternative to the query process. I’m not holding my breath and I’m prepared to self-publish more of my stories, but it was refreshing to finally see signs of innovation in an industry that’s been stuck in the mud for too long…