What it's Like to Go on Submission

A little play-by-play, but for books

Hi friends,

I thought I’d do another nuts and bolts publishing post today. We haven’t had one of those in a while, and hopefully this will help some of you about to or hoping to have an agent send your book to editors one day. So, what happens when that happens? Here’s a little overview.

When a book is ready to go on submission, here’s what’s already happened. The author has written the book or proposal and I have edited/reviewed it. Some things need more editing than others so that process varies. Either way, we have a clean, done product. Then, I will have made the submission list. I go through all my contacts and databases and pick the 10-30 editors (roughtly, each book is different) I think will like this book. There are different rules at different houses about who I can send what, so I double check against that and finalize the list and share it with the author. Then I write a pitch letter. This is very much like a query letter, excpet my audience is an editor. But really, I use a similar approach to what I suggest writers do for query letters. My goal is to give the editor all the basic info they need and entice them to read it right away.

When all this is ready and I’ve gone over everything with the client, I start sending things out. I’ll email or call the editor (emailing much more now that editors are working from home) and tell them about the project or send them the pitch and the manuscript/proposal. And that’s it. Pitch and send.

And then we wait. And wait and wait and wait. Sometimes, a few days later, an editor will start making noise. They’ll ask who else at my house has this? because different houses have different rules about who can bid against each other, or whether they can enter different bids at all. That doesn’t mean this editor is automatically going to make an offer, but they’re scouting things out, getting their ducks in a row.

Then they’ll let me know, often but not always, that they’re taking the project to their editorial board. This is the first hurdle. The team has to agree that this is something worthy of pursuing. Every publisher is different (sensing a theme here?) but ed board or acquisitions as it’s sometimes called, is often made up of editors, marketing people, sales people, and/or the bosses and the interested editor distributes material so that everyone can take a look before they discuss it in a meeting. Sometimes everyone reads (part of) it. Sometimes the editor can just say I want this, what do you think? to their boss. Say it with me: every publisher is different.

If everyone agrees, then the acquiring editor draws up a P&L (profit and loss statement) to see how much it will cost to make the book, how many copies they guess it will sell, and thus how much they can “afford” to give the author as an advance. This is basically the fuzziest math on the planet (which we’ll go into later) but there are actual numbers behind those advances offered. It’s not just a number pulled out of a hat.

When the P&L is approved, the editor makes an offer to the agent and everyone takes a deep breath and crosses their fingers. The editor hopes their offer is accepted (after some counteroffers, of course. That’s built in there, too). The agent hopes this means there could be more than one offer (which we’ll go into later), but either way it’s an OFFER! The agent then tells the client and then alerts all the other editors still reading that there’s an offer on the table, and if they want this project, they better hustle. The other editors don’t get to know the details of the offer on the table, but once they know there is an offer, they definitely sit up and take notice.

What happens next is a topic for a whole ‘nother newsletter, which I promise to do. But some other things that might happen along the way during a submission are: we may set up a time for the author and editor (and agent) to talk, to get to know each other a little and ask questions. The editor may ask questions, in a call or just in an email to the agent, that lead to some tweaks or revisions to the work. The editor might make a pre-empt, which is an offer so big and nice that it takes the whole project off the table and away from other editors. But we’ll get into that another time, too.

And sometimes, we hear back from every editor and every note is a pass. It’s just the way it goes. There may be other editors to go to in a second round of submissions or that might be it. I do not practice any port in a storm style submissions, so I don’t just send to any publisher just to get a deal. A bad deal is worse than no deal, I promise. There may be comments in the editors’ notes (which are thin at best and that’s ok) that point to a place where the project can be revised. We can’t go back to the editors who have passed, but we can revise and try new ones, if there are any to go to. And sometimes, we reach the end of the road and there’s nothing else to be done. It sucks, but it happens to everyone. It’s happened to me as an agent and an author. It happens to the best of us.

But, more on what happens when there’s an offer next time on Agents & Books!

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Stay safe friends,

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO