THE ONE THAT DOESN’T END WHERE YOU THINK
Cat/genre: various
I had the weirdest start to publishing of any writer I’ve ever met.
I wrote my first book in 2005 and queried it when they were just switching from self-addressed envelopes to email. I researched agents in the 3-inch thick Writer’s Digest Guide to Publishing. In my memory, I queried every agent in the book. According to my computer, I queried three.
For the next few years, I picked away at writing without getting too serious about it. In 2012, I started writing fanfic, and suddenly, books flowed out of me like an overflowing sink.
Then, I got my big break. Fanfiction became legal to sell.
What??????
That’s right, reader, you might remember that Amazon made a deal with the copyright holders of specific fandoms to give them a cut of royalties if they’d allow other authors to sell fanfic as e-books. They started with permission to publish in only three fandoms, and one of them was mine.
I packaged up eight of my best novel-length fics and submitted them to Amazon. All were accepted—but there was more! Amazon’s editors were delighted with the stories and wanted to promote my books, specifically. My fic-books were already online, selling away at a steady 1-2 copies a day, and then, Amazon started promoting them. Suddenly the bar graph spiked and I was selling dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of books. I was outselling John Green! And Nora Roberts! WITH FANFICTION! It was like a key turned in my head, and I thought, wow, those were the same books last week as they are this week. Pure marketing produced those sales. Without marketing, quality doesn’t matter.
That’s the lesson that stuck with me, even after Amazon stopped their fanfic-for-sale experiment and my eight books went out of print.
Then, I got my big break.
An editor called me from New York (no, I am not making this up). I still have no idea how they got my phone number, but as it happened, a television spin-off from the fandom I wrote in had just started and they wanted a set of books to go along with it. Oh, and they wanted me to write them, because I was the bestselling author in the fandom. They were offering real money and the chance to make publishing contacts that could launch my career. I signed so fast I all but broke the pen.
Then, I started working with the editors and found that what they wanted was a book that I would categorize as…trash. In terms of the prose, the story, all of it. Trying to compromise and keep my foot in the door of NYC publishing, I asked if I could write under a pen name (to salvage my dignity). They said no. They wanted my name because it had pull in the fandom. But this was my big break! How could it start with me publishing a terrible book?
Reader, I unsigned that contract.
I cried (a lot) and promised myself I’d never write a book I wouldn’t be willing to put out under my own name (she says, in an anonymous blog. But just wait, you’ll see why the blog must be anonymous).
I kept writing. More fanfic, and then original fic. I’ve written so many books, in fact, we’re going to need to keep track for this next part. NB: these aren’t all the books I’ve written, I’m only numbering the ones I tried to get traditionally published.
Book #1 stayed in a drawer, but then I wrote an ambitious post-apocalyptic novel, book #2 and queried it to agents. I got requests! I got rejections! Another idea popped into my head, book #3, a New Adult. The voice was so clear I flew through writing it, and it was New Adult at the PRECISE moment that New Adult had just become a thing. I couldn’t wait to query it until I was through all my agent options for book #2, so I did the thing you’re not supposed to do. I queried both at once.
Then, I got my big break.
Barely six weeks after I’d started querying book #3, an agent called me, and said it was the cleanest manuscript they’d ever read.
I signed.
We went on sub. New Adult went into style, then back out of style. We were still on sub. The book went to acquisitions three times, and even got one R&R that the editor loved, but the marketing team didn’t. I wrote three books for the rest of the series while I waited. After two years, even my very determined agent declared the series dead.
After shelving the whole series, I wrote book #4. It was a genre romance with literary scale metaphors that tackled big social issues, and I pretty much knew it was the longest of long shots. Totally unmarketable. My agent, out of loyalty or a lack of sanity, put it on sub.
After that, I wrote book #5, a romantic suspense that was feminist as hell, and really timely to stuff going on in the outside world. I finished it and put it on sub while we were still waiting on responses to book #4, which had made it to second reads months ago.
During all this time, I got new CPs, better CPs, hired freelance editors, hired better freelance editors. With every book, I pushed even harder to find the magic thing that would make all my books sell. Meanwhile, the topics I’d written about in book #4 (the totally unmarketable one) had come more centrally into the public eye.
Then, I got my big break.
After a year and a half on sub, I sold that unsellable book.
In a multibook deal.
I had never happy-cried in my life, not even at my wedding, but I happy-sobbed in a gas station parking lot when I got the news. By this point, I’d been continuously on sub, with three different books, for three years. It had been five years since I unsigned a contract so I wouldn’t have to write a terrible book. I was getting published anyway, on my own terms, for a book I was proud of.
I thought that was the end of my sub story.
The end, after all, is when you find out what it all means and whether it was worth it. Usually when we hear on-sub stories, they end with the book deal, and so that’s the narrative arc we’re all prepared to live out. But what happens after?
Book #4 came out, then the second of my contracted books—which was a lucky project that never had to go on sub. They got gorgeous reviews, and hit a smattering of Best Of lists. The sales were better than I could have hoped and I was so proud…
…until my publisher told me the sales weren’t enough and they wouldn’t be publishing another book from me.
But that was okay, I told myself. Because during the wait, I had written and subbed book #6—in a totally new age category and genre. I would simply sell that to a different house and be on my way.
It didn’t sell.
I went out on sub with book #7, a book of my heart that flowed out of me from pure joy.
Editors loved it, it went to acquisitions several times, but it didn’t sell.
But even that was okay because I had a trump card in my pocket: my magnum opus, book #8. Over the course of many years, it had been painfully beaten into shape by editor after editor, draft after draft. It was the best thing I’d ever written, in yet another new genre. I could try it on sub with a fresh start under a whole new pen name.
I put it on sub. Editors loved it. They raved about it. Reader, they did not buy it.
I cried, despaired, picked myself up, wrote another book I loved—book #9—and put it on sub.
It didn’t sell.
After all that, I was left sitting there with my pile of books that I loved more than my own bones, both published and unpublished. I stared askance at all my fantastic reviews, all the glowing rejections that gave no reason why editors weren’t buying, wondering…what the hell does this all mean? I’m signed with one of the top literary agencies. I was published by one of the biggest publishers in the world. I got advances that were more than most authors will see in a lifetime. Collected starred trade review after starred trade review. Won awards. Sold tens of thousands of copies, and yet I both look and feel like a failure at publishing.
Why did I start to write like it was a compulsion, like it was a calling, if it was all going to come to years of mixed-up success and rejection, champagne and tears, with no end in sight?
The thing is, I’m not the only one who’s had this moment.
I came here, in the sanctuary of anonymity, to turn a false narrative on its head. Most of the time, the only stories that actually get told about publishing are the ones that have a happy ending.
Except the book deal is not the end.
Even if your trad pub debut takes off like a rocket, the truth is that not everything you ever write will get published. I’ve talked to NYT bestselling authors who hit the list on their first book and were dropped by their publisher after their second. Even if you get published, even if some or all of your books sell very well, there is no “making it” in this industry so that you won’t ever have to struggle in some way with another book.
I don’t write this to discourage. I write this so you’ll understand. The publishing life is one of struggle, no matter how good you are. No matter how hard you work.
Please don’t hold your breath and ignore the screams of your body while you sprint toward the finish line, hoping that once you get there, you can collapse and rest and be given water. There is no finish line.
Do this only if you can care for yourself and live a beautiful life within this struggle. During all the times you get your big break and all the times you don’t. Don’t hold your breath.
Love yourself for writing your books, each and every one. And take care of yourself as gently and kindly as you can, for every step of this race. Because, dear readers, you are the finish line.
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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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