THE ONE WHERE THE STARS ALIGNED
Cat/genre: Adult Romcom
My submission success story is one of those obnoxious ones where everything came together in barely a month.
HOWEVER, that “magically fast deal” came after eight years of querying, leaving one agent and going back into the trenches for almost two years before signing with another, and having a book die on sub with agent 1. So what may look from the outside like a flash in the pan was actually a pot of painfully slowly boiling water.
I also think my sub story is a great reminder of how much book deals are about timing as much as they are about good stories and talent and all that.
I signed with my current agent about two months before we went on sub. We had some small tweaks we wanted to make to the story before it went to editors, and I had initially been hoping to get them done quickly so we could get the book out in the world as soon as possible. But then my beloved dog died and for a good month, I couldn’t focus, so it was late January before I finished revisions and early February before the book was ready to sub.
While I was working on revisions, my agent scheduled a catch-up meeting with an editor, and the very day of that meeting, the editor posted a #MSWL on Twitter that perfectly aligned with my book, so when they met, my agent made sure to talk it up. The editor got super excited, and said she hoped we’d submit to her, since the book sounded like exactly what she was on the hunt for. When my agent let me know about the editor’s enthusiasm, I may have done a little dance in my home office. It felt, in some ways, like I’d levelled up. I’d never had an editor sound so interested in my work before.
My agent put together a list of about twelve editors for us to sub to first: it was a mixture of Big Four and mid-sized publishers, including (at the top) the editor she’d spoken to. That editor was one of the first to confirm receipt when my agent sent the book out, and about two weeks later (TWO WEEKS—that’s like thirty seconds in publishing time!) she reached out to set up a phone call. (She told me later she stayed up too late the day we subbed to read it from beginning to end.) We had the BEST chat, and it was so clear that she understood what I was trying to accomplish with my book, and she had such great ideas to make it even stronger. I knew in my heart she was the right editor for this story.
About a week after our call (THE LONGEST WEEK OF MY LIFE), we had an offer in hand. My agent reached out to the rest of our list to let them know we had an offer, and while the other editors ended up passing, I already knew I had the right champion for the book and I was excited to start negotiating terms. My editor and agent went back and forth a few times, and in the end, I had a fantastic offer with an editor who understood my story and loved it as much as I did. THE DREAM. Thanks to the pandemic, I couldn’t really go out for a big celebration, but there was more dancing and a lot of crying and celebratory fudge.
As this was not my first time on submission, I was grateful to have that magic moment where things in publishing moved quickly for a change, but I do think a lot of that quick movement was due to the fact that I happened to have a book that hit someone’s wish list at the exact right moment. That’s the kind of stuff we, as writers, can’t control and it can make this whole process even more stressful because there’s nothing we can do to “fix” timing.
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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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