How should she explain in her cover letter that her first publisher rejected the new manuscript?
Levine: My first response is that you don’t have to explain or apologize. You don’t have to talk about it at all unless it’s particularly relevant. It’s common enough that people have published a book with one publisher and then the second book happens to be different. If you’ve published a nonfiction book, and this is a fiction one, that makes it obvious. You say, “Knopf is publishing my first book which is a nonfictional treatment of blah-blah-blah, but I’m looking for another publisher to do my fiction and I think you’re right.” Just market it in a positive way. You don’t have to do full disclosure. It’s a relative of the statement that you don’t have to apologize for no publishing credits. You also don’t have to say, “This editor rejected my manuscript.” I think they’ll assume that you are either choosing to publish with this other house because you want two publishers, or that there was not agreement about the second manuscript. As a writer, I have a publisher and they haven’t tak
