THE ONE WHERE AGENT INTEREST DIDN’T TRANSLATE
Cat/genre: adult historical
This is for those who wonder if unicorn querying experiences translate to sub. It’s also for those who wonder if it’s worth doing R&Rs.
I went on sub still riding a grand high. I’d gotten my agent after a whirlwind querying experience in spring 2023. I sent out my first batch of queries and received an email six days later asking for a call. Figuring an offer was coming, I sent out the rest of the queries on my list, and once I received the offer and notified the agents, I ended up with over 20 full requests on almost 40 queries. An astounding 60+% request rate (basically unheard of in these post-pandemic times). Followed by six offers of rep. I signed with someone I considered a “dream” agent.
Full disclosure: This was the third book I queried, so even ‘unicorn’ stories aren’t always as magical as they seem.
We did a brief round of edits, then sent the manuscript off to editors. My agent and I were preparing for a fast sale.
We didn’t get it.
What we did get was about ten rejections in two weeks. While I appreciated the quick responses, it humbled the part of me that had gotten a little too confident in the story. To be honest, it more than humbled me—that kind of rapid-fire rejection broke me a little. Now, I was questioning everything. Maybe the book wasn’t good? Maybe the agents who’d offered only did because of hype? Now, editors were seeing right through my words to the impostor beneath.
My agent and I took a breather, reassessed the manuscript, and I spent the next couple of months doing a bigger edit. By fall 2023, we went out in another round. This time, I got more involved in making editor suggestions.
A month in, one of the editors I’d asked my agent to sub to said while she loved the writing and voice, she thought it needed something more, like a contemporary timeline to go along with the historical story we’d submitted.
So once again, not the unbridled enthusiasm we were hoping for.
But wait! I actually had a contemporary timeline. One my agent didn’t know about because I’d only written a draft of it, then discarded it before querying because I thought it would make the book too long. My agent told this to the editor, who asked us to send her a synopsis of this version. So I wrote it up and sent it. A couple of weeks later, the editor asked for the first 100 pages, so I edited the contemporary draft—only about 50 pages since I wove in 50 pages of the historical timeline—and sent it back.
A couple of weeks later, my agent said the editor wanted to set up a zoom. A call! This was it.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
The editor reiterated that while she loved the writing, my voice, and the historical story, she didn’t think the contemporary timeline was there yet. She suggested I edit those pages again. My agent told me I had to make this perfect or we would probably lose the editor. At this point, we’d also gotten a couple of responses from other editors saying they loved the book but also thought it could use a contemporary timeline. We could have told them we had one but didn't. At this point, we were invested in working with the original editor who showed interest. So again, I went back to my pages, knowing something wasn’t right but not knowing how to fix it.
Until I finally did. I had an idea.
I furiously worked through those pages, finishing the whole edit in a weekend. I don’t know how, but I could see it all right before me and it came together so easily, I knew it was right this time. I loved it. I just hoped the editor did too.
We went back to the editor, and within a couple of weeks, we heard back: We were going to acquisitions. This came as we were heading into the holidays, but it was a couple of weeks away still, so I figured we’d have an answer before publishing shut down for a break.
We did not.
Every worry passed through my mind, just as it had while waiting to hear back what the editor thought about the synopsis, and the first 100 pages, then the additional revision. I figured maybe she didn’t want to deliver the bad news right before the holidays.
By the second week of January, we heard back. An offer was coming. It took another week to receive it.
In the grand scheme of it, I wasn’t on sub very long, especially in these sluggish times. Two weeks for the first round, then four months for the second. Those last six weeks though, from the time I was told my book was going to acquisitions to the offer, were the hardest, not knowing if we’d gotten this far only for my book to die.
Sometimes writers on sub talk about R&Rs and if they’re worth it, and despite my success with one, I don’t have a definitive opinion. Mine was a no-brainer because I already had the contemporary timeline drafted—so not only was it less work than if I’d had nothing, but I was already on board with the idea of a dual timeline since I’d originally planned it that way. Another thing that made it easier was the editor didn’t ask me to edit the entire manuscript before offering. It was kind of a combination R&R/proposal. For those who would have to do more, I think the decision comes down to how much you like the suggested edits, how much time they would take, how long you’ve been on sub, and how interested you are in the editor/imprint offering the R&R.
One thing I do know though: A unicorn querying experience does not necessarily translate to sub!
*
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
*