Publishing?

To publish or not to publish.   That is the question.
I contacted a publisher about a month ago-the first time I have ever done so.  All three of my previous novels have been self-published affairs, but I wanted to gauge the interest in the traditional publishing world, so I contacted a small publishing firm on the east coast.  They surprised me with an extremely prompt reply which was both favorable and unfavorable at the same time.

The publisher gave me some constructive criticism and told me if I was willing to rewrite part of the sample I had sent to him, that they would like to look at it again.  I thanked him sincerely and set about adding onto the prologue and changing the first chapter.  A week later I sent it to him and...haven't heard a thing since.  No acknowledgement of having received the resubmission and no response to my followup email three weeks later asking if he had had a chance to look at the longer sample I sent to him.

Now, I asked myself why I have received no word and, of course, several thoughts ran through my head: his team hated it, and couldn't be bothered with sending a response back to me, they just haven't had the chance to go through it, lost it, the publisher died, they were insulted by the way I sent it and haven't bothered to respond out of spite, or they're continuing to evaluate it.

I've considered the possibility that they're probably not interested and maybe just don't want to communicate anymore.   I think that may be rude or discourteous, but maybe they're just caught up in a busy time of the year and haven't had the time to respond.

Anyway, I've decided to send it out to at least a dozen more publishers and see if there may be some interest somewhere.  Maybe I will practice what Grant Blackwood called "irrational optimism" when seeking traditional publication.

If you never try, you never succeed.