How to Get Published 5: Selling Your Story

Step five in my really quick guide to getting published is titled ‘The Agent Sells Your Book.’ This seems to be a pretty straightforward step where you need to do virtually nothing. From what I’ve heard, this is where the agent really steps in and the author takes a breather. However, this doesn’t mean it’s easy for the author.

First off, you have to realize that even if you get an agent, your first book might not sell. No matter how much an agent loves it, a publisher just might not. Kiersten White, author of the bestselling Paranormalcy, snagged her agent with a totally different story which never sold. While she was on sub (the term for her manuscript being out with editors) she wrote Paranormalcy just for fun. This is good advice for anyone; when you’ve got your agent don’t just sit back and relax. Keep writing. Even supposing your book does sell, what about sequels? Or a new series?

Most of the time, however, your book will sell. Agents don’t take on new clients unless they’re pretty certain. I’d love to give you an average time period between signing with an agent and getting an editor, but the truth is… there isn’t one. Some books can sell within a week. Others may take months. It all depends.

A quick sneak peak into what your agent does: They send your book off to editors, just like you when you queried the agent. Agents will have contacts with editors at publishing houses, so they’ll know who to contact, how to contact them and what they’re looking for at the time. This all sounds like something you could do yourself, since it’s basically just a repeat of the query process, but the publishing industry is all about who you know, and an agent will know many more editors than you do.

At last publishing houses will start offering, and you (with the help of your agent) will choose which one to accept. You could take the one that offers the most money, or the one whose editor you would prefer to work with. After all, this is just like choosing an agent; an editor is another partner for life. This is also the person you’re going to spend the next months with, slaving over your story and perfecting it. Then ARCs will start coming out, and the reviews will start rolling in… and you’ll start working on your next book, if you haven’t already.

This is the end of my How-To-Get-Published Series, and I hope it shed some light on the process for you guys. Please note that I have no personal experience with any of this; I just read a lot of blogs. If there’s anything you’d like me to clear up, then just ask. What do you think my new series should be on?

How to Get Published 4: Querying

Supposing you’ve followed the first three steps, writing a brilliant novel, obtaining feedback and revising according to that feedback, you should now be ready to query. Simply put, a query is a short letter, no more than 500 words, that makes an agent want to read your manuscript. Like anything in the writing business, there’s a whole list of rules for query writing. These rules can occasionally be broken, but unless you’re absolutely brilliant, following the format is by far the best way to snag an agent.

Firstly, you’ll need to find agents. Agentquery is a great place, and you can search by genre and whether or not they’re open to queries at the time. It’s also a good idea to look in books that you liked and read the acknowledgements. The author will almost always thank their agent. It’s always good to mention in your query that you’ve read and enjoyed other books the agent has represented.

Then you need to get to know the agent. Do you actually want this agent representing you? An author/agent partnership will affect the rest of your career, so chose wisely. Look at the sort of books the agent sells. I want an agent with tastes similar to mine, so I wouldn’t pick one who sells a lot of paranormal romance or erotica. As an unpublished author, it sometimes feels like just getting any agent would be amazing, but honestly, no agent is better than a bad agent.

Once you have a list of agents you would like representing you, you need to send out your query. I’m not going to tell you how to write a query; Nathan Bransford, Query Shark and Elana Johnson can teach you that much better than I can. Once you have the query, send it out to a couple agents, perhaps ten at a time. Make sure you follow the individual agent’s guidelines. Some will just want a query, others will want the first couple pages of manuscript and a synopsis (though it's almost always a good idea to paste the first chapter or two in the email unless the agent specifically requests that you don't. Agents always like to get a feel for your writing style. But whatever you do, DON'T send an attachment!). Always address your query to the agent by name; nothing kills a query faster than ‘Dear Mister/Madam.’ These may seem like little things, but your first impression is so important.

And then… prepare for rejections, because you will get them. I’ve only heard of one author who got their agent first time. Everyone else had to go through many, many rejections. Leigh Fallon, the first inkpopper to get published by HarperTeen, didn’t get an agent the first time around. Don’t respond to the rejections; just delete them or store them away somewhere, and move on.

At last, at some point, you should hopefully get a request for a partial or full. You’ll send this off to the agent formatted as they request, and then prepare for another rejection. If you’re amazingly lucky, this is where you get an offer of representation. The agent will call, you’ll talk, and if you think this agent would be a good fit for you… Ta da! You’ve got an agent! 

How to Get Published 3: Revisions

Step Three on the road to getting published is… *drum roll please* the dreaded revision. Every author has to revise their work. This could be tiny things like putting ‘ambled’ instead of ‘walked’ or huge changes to the plot or characters. Whichever it is, you have to expect revisions and be willing to completely re-write your manuscript if needed.

There is no way I can cover the topic of revisions in just one blog post—entire books could be written on the subject. I just want to quickly talk a bit about revisions in direct connection with publishing.

Before you start querying (which I’ll talk about next time) you have to have the absolute best book you can write by yourself. Chances are you’ll still have to revise more for your agent/editor, but that doesn’t mean you can be lazy at this stage. Make it as good as it can possibly be. (And just so you know, the manuscript has to be finished before querying. Established authors can sometimes sell a book based just on a proposal, but for debut authors, you should have a finished manuscript that’s already as amazing as possible.)

Sometimes when you start querying agents, one will ask you to do some revisions before offering representation. This means that you’ll put a lot of work into changing the story for them, and they still might not take you as a client. This is a bit of a risk, especially if the agent wants exclusive revisions, so it’s your decision whether to do them or not. I personally think I would make the changes, assuming I thought their ideas were good, but I’ve never been in that situation.

Even after you have an agent, the work doesn’t stop. They’ll almost certainly ask you to do more revisions. And then when they sell your manuscript to an editor, they’ll be an awful lot more, well… editing. This may sound kind of awful—after all, you’ve already slaved over this book for years by yourself—but I’ve heard of many authors who actually enjoyed this step. After all, what could be better than working to perfect your story with an agent/editor who loves your novel as much as you do?

I suppose the crucial thing about revisions is that you have to learn to expect them, if not to love them. Get used to editing everything you write. Get as much feedback as you possibly can, and then use it. Make this novel as good as you possibly can. If you truly love your story, it shouldn’t be that hard to spend hours perfecting it.