I Got 8 Agent Offers; Then, My Book Died on Sub
Oh hi. I’m that writer who bragged to the internet about getting not one, not two, but EIGHT AGENT OFFERS!
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I’m back with a new announcement.
My book died on sub.
Serves me about right.
(Translation: ‘Dying on sub’ means my agent sent the book out to editors and no one wanted to publish it.)
I was told by many, many people not to talk about this, that sharing this would brand me as a ‘failed’ writer.
But we NEED more people talking openly about their disappointing publishing experiences.
Because people only ever talk about their successes—our Twitter and Instagram feeds are all flooded with agent announcements and huge book deals. And I was no different—my pinned tweet was celebrating my EIGHT AGENT OFFERS. (Didja hear??? Someone slap me already, please.)
We forget that before every one of these shiny successes, ALL writers suffer through dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of failures and rejections. We forget this is the norm, because social media only shines light on the very, very rare moments of success.
Today, I’m going to make public my first huge failure as a writer.
It’s time to get real about what dying on sub was actually like.
Here’s how sub started. A month after signing with my agent, she sent my book to a group of Big Five editors. My agent (who I love to death) had a good feeling that the book would sell quickly. Ideally at auction (meaning that more than one publishing house would put in an offer).
Most agents who had made me offers had told me they had similar expectations for my book.
Six days later, my agent was calling with great news—an editor wanted to speak on the phone. My agent warned me not to get too excited. This was a good sign but not a guarantee the book would sell.
But because one editor wanted to speak, this meant things were in motion. Now, we got to go back to all of the other editors who had my manuscript to let them know there was already interest. They had two weeks to review my book and make competing offers.
Less than 24 hours later and we had another editor who wanted a call.
Things were happening.
My book was going to sell. Quickly. At auction.
Two days before the first call, I woke up to a text from my agent—the first editor had canceled her call. Higher-ups at her publishing house had passed.
I lay in bed for hours, just staring at my phone.
I can’t explain how bad it felt to get that text. I put my phone on selfie mode and started filming. In the video, I am just staring at my phone, crying, talking in dead voice. My cat walks up behind me and nuzzles into my face, doing her best to comfort me.
I thought that would be the worst of it. That—horror of horrors—my book would sell, but not at auction.
Then, the night before call number two, my agent texted me again.
The second editor had canceled our call.
In a few days, I had gone from having a potential auction to having a book that might never sell.
Weeks went by. Long, long pandemic 2020 weeks during which I kept my phone out and checked multiple times an hour, waiting for That Text from my agent, telling me we had That Call.
I even left my phone on for calls during tutoring sessions, which I have never done in over a decade of tutoring. Just in case.
I was listening to a podcast where someone described a bowel obstruction, during which their intestine was wrapped tightly around itself, causing utter agony. I found that an apt metaphor for my emotional journey. It’s really, really hard working on a book for years and then releasing the most vulnerable part of yourself to be judged. Going into sub thinking this is going to be Your Moment and instead getting to watch your book baby get rejected over and over, told that it’s not cute enough for the world to see.
Dealing with this rollercoaster through a pandemic summer was … not great, to put it lightly. There was nowhere to go. No friends to see. No way to distract myself from my brain. The one that kept reminding me that my book was not good enough. That I was not good enough.
But then–weeks later–the second editor who had canceled our call reached out to reschedule.
Things were moving again.
We had the call. It went great. The editor even mentioned a very specific detail from my book–one that was near and dear to my heart–and told me how much she loved it.
Then the editor took the book to acquisitions. That’s the Big Meeting with all of the higher-ups. The one where the book usually sells.
The night after the meeting, the editor posted a tweet with a very specific detail from my book—the detail we had discussed together on our call—alongside a happy tears emoji.
My agent texted.
“This HAS to be good news!”
My agent wasn’t one to jump the gun.
I felt my heart rate speed up.
The next day, the editor tweeted that they had VERY EXCITING NEWS.
I floated through the next two days. This was it. This was finally it.
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While I was in a tutoring session with a student, I saw my phone finally light up with The Call from my agent. I excused myself for a moment, apologizing and explaining to the student that I would never take a call during a session, but—I had just gotten a book deal!
I hit pause on Zoom and opened up Facetime on my phone.
“I have bad news,” my agent started.
The editor had passed.
I felt every ounce of positivity that had somehow survived through that hellish summer fly out of my body.
Sub was now officially over.
My book baby was dead.
But by that night, I somehow felt … better than I had all summer?
The anxiety and waiting were finally over.
My baby was no longer being held up and inspected and judged. My verdict had been decreed. It wasn’t the one I had wanted.
But it wasn’t the end of the world.
The next morning, my agent sent me the passes she had accumulated from editors over that summer.
I read through the passes. They were kind. They liked my voice. One even liked my Twitter feed (thanks to that editor!! So nice!). But they were all worried that books centered around social media wouldn’t sell.
It’s normal for books to go on two or three rounds of sub, and my agent said it was up to me—that she still loved the book and thought I could revise it and get a deal.
But I knew right away that that wasn’t what I wanted to do. Maybe I will return to this book, one day. But I didn’t want to have to go through that emotional rollercoaster all over again.
It absolutely sucked to accept that after all of that time and hard work, my book was being shelved. I thought I’d finally get to see a book out in the world. That I’d be a ‘real’ author.
There is a huge amount of shame in finally getting agented, openly discussing it (boasting about it, even, like I did!), and not getting published. Worse in many ways when it comes to non-writer friends and family, who don’t understand how this industry works. (You got an agent; when can I buy your book?)
But I don’t see all of the time and energy I poured into this first book as a failure or a waste of time.
I see it as the book that allowed me to find my writing community, that taught me about story structure and pacing, that got my fingers and brain in shape, that allowed the next book I wrote to flow right out.
We so often give up because we think our experiences aren’t normal, our failures are signs we’re not good enough, that if we were going to succeed we would have already. That if we’re not all Becky Albertallis who meet their agent at a conference and then 30 seconds later have a 14-book auction and then a bestseller and then a movie, we might as well throw in the towel.
Which is why I think it’s important to be open with our failures. We need to remember that failure is the NORM, not the exception.
If you are getting rejected or failing, you are a real writer. NOT the other way around.
So—here it is. I wrote a book, got an agent, and failed to get a book deal.
Note: I wrote this post in 2020 but am just getting the courage to share it now. Since then, I wrote a second book, which I was lucky enough to get a book deal for. That book, We Ship It, came out last June with HarperTeen.
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