I read somewhere that Debbie Macomber has a mailing list of over 75,000 readers who receive postcard updates of her latest releases. Her first sale, HeartSong, was the first ever romance to be reviewed by Publishers Weekly.
It’s hard to imagine that someone like Ms. Macomber ever worried about being published. But Macomber, like every author and every aspiring author, began with one sale and the story that she tells for us is not that of the sale of her first novel, but rather a different kind of first sale. Her most recent book, 8 Sandpiper Way debuted on No. 8 on the New York Times.
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I’m sure all writers remember the sale of their first book. For me, that fateful phone call from New York came on September 29, 1982 (at 4:39 p.m.)–but what I want to tell you about is my very first official sale.
I’d been pounding away at the typewriter for nearly three years, and I’d completed two and a half manuscripts. They were returned so fast that I often tell people they hit me in the back of the head on the way home …
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