I just watched a documentary on the development of new toys.

And man, I thought aspiring writers had it tough. Sure, we spend months or years writing our novel and polishing into a perfect gem, then spend more months crafting draft after draft of a query letter in the faint hope of attracting an agent. We dread opening our Inbox, for fear every email could be one more rejection.

But toy inventors, they have it worse.

First, they not only have to come up with the idea for the toy or game, and work out all the details of how it works, they also have to actually create one, complete with packaging. That is roughly analogous to writing and editing a novel.

But then the process begins to differ. Writers only have to mail or email our carefully crafted queries to agents, or at worst ship our entire manuscript to those few publishers who actually accept unsolicited submissions. But toy inventors, they have to give in person presentations. They have to travel to the toy company’s headquarters to give their pitch in person. Writers have conferences where we have to pitch agents and publishers in person, and so do toy inventors. We do it with a line or two, maybe a few copies of our query shyly handed to an agent we met in the line for lunch. Toy inventors have to rent booths with shelf after shelf of their toy, they have to have decorations and displays and even multi media presentations, all paid for out of their own pocket.

Imagine for a moment, if we writers had to do that.

Write your book, edit it, edit it, edit it, come up with cover art, find a printer and produce a few dozen copies. Then find a convention, rent a booth, travel there and set up your booth with shelves of your book, a TV with a book trailer playing on a loop, set up a few card board cut outs of your characters, then stand around pitching to all the agents and publishers who wander by. All at a cost of thousands of dollars.

Then do it again at the next convention.

No thank you. I think I will keep things the way they are, I will submit my queries to agents via email, and I will take my impersonal rejections from the comfort of my own living room, all without complaint.