THE ONE THAT ENDED IN GERMANY
Cat/genre: YA Fantasy
In February 2017, I went on sub with my first book. Well, it wasn’t actually my first book—in terms of written manuscripts, it was my second—but we don’t talk about that first book. No good can come from talking about that book.
Anyway, book 2 was a YA contemporary fantasy about mermaids and it went out on sub in the UK market first for two reasons: 1) I’m English, and 2) my agent worked for a UK agency, so this was the home market for us both.
We went out to 14 editors in the first round, and when I asked my agent how soon we could expect to hear back, she warned me that UK kidlit moves slower than a microwave, so we probably wouldn’t hear much of anything for at least a few weeks.
And she was right. Our first rejection didn’t materialise until the end of February and marked the beginning of a (very) slow trickle of passes. Only five of our editors had responded by the time we got our first offer on the 21st March—from Germany.
No, you didn’t read that wrong. My first offer came from Germany. Which surprised me too because I had no idea how the manuscript got to Germany in the first place. But as it turns out, my UK agency worked closely with a foreign rights agency that often shops translation rights simultaneously.
Obviously, having any kind of offer in hand was a great confidence booster. Both my UK agent, and foreign rights team were able to go back and nudge editors with this interest, and we really hoped the German sale would soon prompt an English one.
Except… it didn’t.
The nudge did prompt a quick slew of rejections though, which meant we finally had enough to start seeing a pattern in the feedback: “mermaids don’t sell in YA”.
That was the crux of it, to be honest. Mermaids don’t sell. I’ve lost track of how many times we heard that in the next couple of months. Even when editors were willing to take a risk on it (the book made it to second reads/acquisitions at three separate houses) sales came back with that same reason for passing.
Mermaids. Don’t. Sell.
Well, I guess no one told Germany that, since the book went to auction there, with three different houses bidding.
Which erm… was great! Duh. But it did leave us in an interesting position.
See, translation usually happens after a book is fully edited in its home market. The rights may sell very early on, but publishers in these territories are almost always buying the rights to finished books that they simply translate and release.
But we didn’t have a home publisher, and while we all agreed the book was good, there aren’t many books that wouldn’t benefit from an editor’s input before hitting shelves.
Luckily, my German editor was both super keen, and super lovely. She was happy to either wait for us to secure an English deal, or take the editorial lead on the book herself.
Having now received responses from most of our UK editors (as well as a few extra submissions my agent sent out once the German interest came in), we decided to go with option 2. Not because we had exhausted all our English language options—we still had the opportunity to shop the book in the US—but because my UK agent’s US co-agent came back to say: look, I will happily shop this book for you, but mermaids aren’t exactly at the top of anyone’s wish list here, either… which is why we wanted to wait until the book was as polished as it could be before sending it to new eyes.
So we gladly accepted the German deal, I did the edits (my editor was a genius), and then we shopped the book some more. Over the next 12 months, the manuscript made the rounds not only in the US, but with more UK editors as well.
But those submissions ultimately ended in a lot of nice feedback but no offers, because… you guessed it. Mermaids don’t sell!
We did come close though! And, hilariously, the closest we got to securing an English deal was a full year after the book first went out on submission, and that chance came from one of the editors in our very first round.
Turns out, she couldn’t get the book out of her head, and so despite passing on it in the first instance, she got back in touch with my agent to request the shiny new manuscript, and this time, took it all the way to acquisitions, where it promptly died because… say it with me, folks… mermaids don’t sell in YA!
All joking aside, though this deal happened in the weirdest, most unexpected way, I had a truly exceptional time working on the book with the German team. And while I’ll always be a little sad that we couldn’t make an English deal happen, I am forever grateful that my strange little mermaid book found such a good home all the same.
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The stories on this blog are posted anonymously so that authors can speak candidly about their experience. If you have a sub story you’d like to share, drop me an email at: katedylanbooks@gmail.com
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