How Dr Seuss nearly didn't make it

Is there a magic formula for aspiring authors to find a publisher? If only, but here's one amazing account of how a best-seller struggling for a publisher found one - and nearly didn't.

My most recently published book, Sailing to Purgatory, about my very long and very last sail as a lone yachtsman, took ages to find a publishing house.

The voyage covered more than 8,000 miles and experienced some amazing adventures along the way.

I wanted people to know what it's like to be out in the greater part of our planet when often thousands of miles lies between you and the nearest fellow human.

Threatening but fantastic

The oceans can be very threatening and worrying, but adventuring that way is truly fantastic.

However, the voyage won a totally unexpected ending. I was ambushed.

Ambushed! The stuff of films, but it was real and a charge of smuggling utterly false, not to mention that it would have been totally impossible to do.

However, it certainly made for a most dramatic finale … and as it happened, for freedom, too. What a struggle, though, to find a publisher.

A story in the excellent daily literary email, Delancey Place, however, makes me feel much happier about that long, long search.

An excerpt from A Curious Mind by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman tells of the struggle by the famous Dr Seuss, no less, to find a publisher for his first book. It was rejected 27 times.
Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com