THE ONE WHERE THE PERFECT HOUSE BID
Cat/genre: Adult Romance/Women’s Fiction
I'm an American author with an agent based in the UK. I'm also highly aware of my tendency to take tiny bits of information and weave entire psychological dramas around them—that's probably why I'm a writer. Now, this could be a British thing, but my agent doesn't share a ton of behind the scenes details with me. She's awesome and kind and gives great advice—I've even met her in person—but I know some agents like to send along detailed lists of all the imprints and the rounds and the rejections, whereas my agent will give me information only when I ask. So I did ask when I wanted to know, though I eventually found that ignorance is bliss for my anxious brain. For the purpose of this story, I should also note that my agent subbed my book in both the US and the UK simultaneously.
Because my agent only shared one—very complimentary—pass that came in quickly, I assumed we hadn’t heard from any other editors. And maybe it's something about the first response being a rejection kind of… proving that you're not going to have one of those fairytale 8-way auction stories? Reality starts to hit. So I settled in for the long haul.
Or, as it turned out, not so long.
Our next bit of news came in at the beginning of December, only 1-2 months after we went on sub. It was an email from my agent saying that there's an editor at a Big 5 imprint who wants to have a call with me. My agent made it clear in her email that they likely wanted to have a conversation about how open I might be to certain revisions, so I should be ready to talk about that. She also mentioned that a UK editor was interested, but waiting to see what might happen in the US.
Needless to say, I was excited AF when we planned that Zoom call. I reread that editor's most recent book and did some research on the imprint (I'm pretty sure that I did not know, at that point, exactly where else my agent had sent submissions), then my agent suggested that we have a prep call before The Call, so she could let me know that I had received a handful of rejections already.
Oh.
So, yeah, a chorus of sad trombones.
Moreover, she saw a pattern in their feedback and wanted to talk about it with me beforehand because it was likely to come up during The Call.
At this point, I had revised this book so many times that I was not at all precious about it. I just wanted it to be the best it could be and—especially in the wake of the rejections—I knew there were aspects that weren't quite working. On top of that, after doing my research on the imprint, I felt incredibly honored to be considered by them. Being a first-time writer (this book was my first attempt at creative writing, period), my imposter syndrome was—and okay, still is—at full force.
I may have had a panic attack the night before, but The Call went great. I immediately felt a wonderful vibe from the editor and the editorial director (my agent said it felt like a really good first date) and all the thoughts and suggestions made sense to me. And while the issue that had been noted by a few other editors did come up, I was completely fine reworking that aspect of the manuscript.
Nevertheless, I was well aware that simply having an editor want to acquire your book absolutely doesn't guarantee it will happen. I read all the scary tales of books going to the acquisition meeting and not making it through and tried to just forget The Call had happened.
Over the next few weeks, I overanalyzed the language of the emails we exchanged and permitted myself to feel cautious optimism. Based on what I remembered of the discussion, it seemed like a potential offer... or an R&R.
Then just before the holidays, we received the offer. I asked my agent what she thought we should do about the submissions that were still hanging out there in the void. Could we try to use this offer as leverage and a nudge? This is where the rational part of my brain wanted to apply some aggressive business strategy, but my agent had a different point of view, which was informed by actual knowledge of the behind-the-scenes aspects of publishing. She said this imprint was pretty much the best possible home for my novel. They nurture books and provide the kind of marketing support that other imprints (even at the same publisher) do not. And since I loved this editor’s previous book, I had a good idea of what I could expect and hope for. Given all of these considerations, my agent suggested that we withdraw the other submissions and do a pre-empt, signaling that we were truly enthusiastic about working with this imprint. Plus, this was a day or two before Christmas so it was unlikely that anyone else would take some kind of immediate action on my manuscript for weeks anyway.
My agent is a whiz at foreign rights, so she negotiated world all language rights down to world English. This meant we couldn’t also sell the rights to the UK editor who had expressed interest, but I hope the book finds its way back to them through my publisher and gets a UK edition.
We accepted a couple days later and that was a wonderfully low-stress holiday break for me. Even though it wasn't a blockbuster 5-way auction, I felt (and still feel!) 100% confident that the pre-empt was the right decision. I’m well-aware that it’s incredibly difficult to make money through publishing, so the dollar amount of the advance wasn’t the most important factor for me. Basing the decision on the quality of the imprint and—honestly—the gut feeling I got from my editor helped me find the perfect home for my book.
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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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