Introduction
If there’s anything I’ve learned during my time with trad pub, it’s that not everyone arrives at publishing doorstep’s on equal footing.
Some people come with MFAs and workshop experience, some people come from the angle of actually working in publishing, some people write multiple books before attempting to query. Some are on their first book. Some are on Twitter, some not. Some have had mentors, some not. The point being, resources are always welcome and always necessary. Not just at the early stages of your career, but all along the way.
I’m no expert and no teacher, but I can publicize my own experiences and understandings so that people have one more resource on traditional publishing. I’ll cover a range of topics in this How To series, but decided to start with going on sub because if there was a step so far that I had truly the least information and preparedness for, it was this.
As with all advice, especially publishing advice/timelines/sequences, your mileage may vary. I want to emphasize that your journey will differ from mine in many aspects, big and small. Your agent is not doing something wrong just because they’re doing something different. But they might be, so ask questions along the way.
Overview of Steps
Sign with an agent [skipping]*
Receive an edit letter + Revision
Sub list + packet
On sub + Waiting
New rounds + Revision
R&Rs + Shelving a book
Receiving an offer + editor calls [skipping]*
Signing a contract [skipping]*
*Steps 1, 7, and 8 are outside the scope of this newsletter, but I may give each of them their own How To at a future date!
Receive an edit letter + Revision
After signing with your agent, you should probably expect to receive an edit letter/go through revisions on your book. The degree of revision will vary: some people will just do a polish round, no edit letter, and go on sub. Some (like me!) will go through rounds of deep revision to prepare the book for editors. The timeline depends on you and your agent, but I will run through mine as a reference:
July 29 2020: Signed my contract
August 20 2020: Received my 1st edit letter
September 19 2020: Turned in 1st round revision
October 25 2020: Received my 2nd edit letter
December 31 2020: Turned in 2nd round
January 13, 2021: Received 3rd round of edits (comments in a Word doc)
January 18, 2021: Turned in 3rd round
January 25 2021: Officially on submission
This mainly moved at my pace depending on things in my life/how long it took me to go through revisions. My agent never pressured me to move faster, and the process of revision was my choice and led by me, though my agent’s feedback was an invaluable guiding light.
Sub list + Packet
Based on the above timeline, between January 13 and January 25 my agents also sent me a sub list and a pitch packet. I reviewed the sub list (~10 editors) and could suggest names or ask for names to be removed. I had little to add, as I’m not an agent and trusted mine to come up with their list! But had an editor appeared that I had heard sub par things about, or had an editor been left off that I thought would be a fit, I could discuss both with my agents.
They also sent me the pitch they’d be using and I provided edits on it.
On Sub + Waiting
For some, this is the shortest section of the whole process. I think I can safely say that for most it’s the longest or second longest (after revision). As of July 6, 2022 when this newsletter publishes, I am still in the waiting phase.
It’s also a deeply anticlimactic phase. On January 25, 2020 my agent emailed me and said, basically “you’re on sub.” Crucially, we set up a check-in schedule (updates every Tuesday) (Send me all rejections verbatim). After that was just silence.
Those Tuesday updates tore me apart, whether there was something to report or not. I spent all Tuesday jittery and refreshing my email, waiting to be sandbagged by rejections or silence (and I knew they were at best rejections because if it was good news, my agent wouldn’t be waiting for a Tuesday update to tell me). Eventually I changed the update schedule to be good news only (it took me half a year to make this decision). This made my life WAY better. Now my agent only sends updates when I ask for them.
There’s little you can do while waiting for responses, and there’s little use putting stock in response times. I received my first rejection for my Adult contemporary fantasy at the 15 day mark. From there, they arrived at the: 36 day mark, 42 day mark, 57, 79, 99, etc.
Crucially, my agent sent nudges at about the 6 week mark, and then 6 weeks after that. So long as people responded, we marked them down as still considering, even though they hadn’t read yet. At the 14 week mark, we spoke about doing revisions before going out to a new round. That constitutes the next section of this post, so scroll down for that.
Before we move on, though, I wanted to talk about what active things I did while on sub: I went on sub with another book, a YA fantasy. About a week after going on sub with the first book I got on a call with my agents to talk about my next project. I already had a query-ready YA that I polished and sent over to them, intending to go on sub with that next. Some people already have multiple projects to work with, some people need to write a new one from scratch. It’s tough ignoring rejection and silences on sub to write a new project. Sometimes you just can’t, and that’s perfectly valid. I recommend you find other things to do that aren’t writing related. Sometimes writing/focusing on that next thing is immensely helpful in de-emphasizing the importance of any one book. So I moved on.
I revised with my agents (3 rounds) from Feb 2021 – May 2021 and went on sub in middle/late May. This coincided with the 14 week mark on the Adult, so I then turned back to that project for new revisions.
New Rounds + Revision
At the 14 week mark (a semi arbitrary marker set by my agent) I collected all of my rejections (I asked for them verbatim from my agents, I wanted to be able to parse them myself) and tried to figure out what would come next. They didn’t really mean a lot, they were pretty vague (see my post on Vague Critique here) but the general pattern focused on the worldbuilding. There was a lot going on, could there be less? There was also a bit about the split timeline, could it come together better? I got on a call with my agent to talk it over, then I got to work. I turned in a new, substantially revised book in June/July 2021, received edits, turned it back around, and went out for round 2 on the Adult book in late October 2021. I went out to ~10 new editors and we also sent the book to holdovers from round 1 who were still considering. As with round 1, my agent nudged at 6 weeks. This round was substantially slower, 4 months later I had only received responses from about half of the editors.
R&Rs + Shelving a Book
I have completed 1 R&R and I have shelved 1 book on sub. I lumped these together in one section as a bit of a grab bag. Sometimes you will get a response that isn’t a rejection but isn’t an acceptance either. The editor may give you some additional level of feedback and note they’re open to seeing a revision. This could be a paragraph in an email, or a call, or an edit letter, or a combo of some sort. It’s your choice whether you want to undertake one, because there are no guarantees they will like what you do, and you may have wasted a ton of brainpower and time revising the book to fit a specific person’s preferences and have it fall through. I undertook my R&R because I agreed with it and because I had other ideas kicking around in the back of my head that I wanted to implement. They ultimately passed, but I am glad I did it anyways because the book is fundamentally different and thus I gave it a second life as it waned on sub. This was also a marker for me to go out on a third round of submission for my Adult fantasy.
As I mentioned, sometimes you will also shelve a book. This can be by choice or by force. By force means you’ve run out of editors to submit it to, no one bought it, and you need to try again with someone else. This doesn’t usually happen after a single round, while there aren’t an infinite number of editors to submit to, far from it, there are usually at least enough for 2-3 rounds.
I shelved my YA fantasy partly by force and partly by choice. It went out to 2 rounds of editors (about 20 editors) and got all Nos. When faced with the possibility of going out to a 3rd round, I voiced doubts that there was a point and my agents agreed to shelve it with me. I was getting no feedback on the actual book’s craft, just a lot of “it’s not for me” or “not at this time.” I didn’t feel the market was in my favor and I still had my Adult on sub, so I chose to shelve this book in case the market changed in the future. Shelving a book is far from the end for anyone looking to build a full career, but it does suck a lot. Give yourself grace.
Conclusion
I will stop my long winded explanation here. If you’re looking for some stories from people on sub, swing by Kate Dylan’s Sob Sub Stories blog and preorder her book!
I’d like to conclude with some advice from others: I asked on Twitter what authors wish they’d known before going on sub and was fortunate to receive a couple replies. I neither endorse nor condone all of it if you decide to go look directly at the Twitter, but here’s a list with my own editing at play:
Deemphasize the importance of your first book and write the next one. Depending on who you are, you might want to do this early before rejections roll in and demolish you
Don’t rush yourself, edit carefully, check for typos, and make sure you’re putting out the best work you feel you can at that moment
Be prepared for silence, it’s even quieter than querying, even slower, with fewer steps along the way (no full or partial requests like in querying) and there are fewer editors (versus agents) who might be a fit for your work
Celebrate the silence! Your agent filters your responses, so you don’t get ambushed with rejections and you can (and should) set up a communication schedule that works for you
Until next time,
Kvita
KVITA 