Unagented: My Circuitous Ride to Traditional Publication
I don’t have an agent, that magical, mystical being who we authors assume will automatically make our dreams come true, but my debut historical novel Oriana will be traditionally published March 19 by Delphinium Books, a literary imprint distributed by HarperCollins. In a stroke of good timing, our pub date coincides with women’s history month, during which I hope to introduce Oriana Fallaci, the legendary journalist who blazed a trail for women in the 1960s and 1970s, to a broader American audience.
(17 Pros & Cons of Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing.)
How did I get published without an agent? Not easily: The writing, revising, and offer took 11 years. I’m not recommending this path, but I am saying it can be done, with three essential ingredients.
Stubborness.
“It’s an underrated virtue,” Oriana says in the opening pages of my novel. “You can get through a lot of life on stubborness.” With every rejection or pass, I grew thicker skin, and now when I receive those emails, they just mean “next.” I stopped taking rejection personally, laser-focused on making the best product I could possibly make, and viewed publishing as a numbers game: If I just keep going, I’ll get to “yes.”
Did I ever fantasize about a more gratifying profession or want to quit? Almost every day. But I always came back to my friend James’s advice: Stacy, you’re in the middle of the ocean, you can’t turn back now. I knew Oriana was a good story (dozens of requests for fulls affirmed that), and I had put too much of myself in.
“Thank God for my enemies,” Oriana says in the novel, “They pushed me harder to succeed.” Oriana had actual enemies who wanted to destroy women journalists, but I can honestly say Thank God for rejections, naysayers, gatekeepers. They drove me harder and made the book better.
Obsession.
Oriana Fallaci was so badass that many journalists, including Christiane Amanpour, have said “I wanted to be her!” So did I. I wanted to shed my shyness and insecurity and be brilliant, confident, glamorous, bold.
I never tired of researching Oriana, never stopped being awed by her nerve in speaking truth to power: She ripped off her chador while interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini when he insulted her. She quoted Kissinger so embarrassingly that he called their conversation his most disastrous with any member of the press. Oriana traveled seven times to Vietnam as a war correspondent and got shot in Mexico City during protests. She was “a legend” according to Dick Cavett and “the best interviewer in the world” according to Newsweek.
How could I be a wimp when my subject was so gutsy? I got inspiration and motivation from Oriana’s refusal to settle for the sidelines and be quiet like a good little girl. As tough as she was as a journalist, she was vulnerable in her personal life. “Every woman is two women,” she says in the novel. She doesn’t get it all. Her love life is wrenching. That poignancy made me more obsessed.
Check out Anastasia Rubis’ Oriana here:
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Luck.
I had some luck along the way that I worked hard to maximize, then a ton of luck that resulted in a 9 pm phone call: “We’d like to publish your novel.”
I first wrote Oriana’s story as a spec screenplay in 2002. A freelance journalist at the time, I interviewed a Hollywood producer for a Greek-American magazine and, after I finished, got up the nerve to pitch him my screenplay. “I love Oriana Fallaci!” he said. Shocked, I arranged a meeting for him with the reclusive Oriana in her Manhattan townhouse, and they smoked cigars and drank whiskey and discussed who would play her. In the end, she refused to sell him screen rights.
Oriana died in 2006. In 2012, teaching English as an adjunct professor, I gave up on movies and started the novel (first chapter: a Hollywood producer visits Oriana…). Two years later, I queried and got requests for fulls but no offers of representation. I hired a freelance editor, revised, and through my college roommate, got the manuscript to my dream editor of historical fiction. The editor emailed me several times, saying Oriana was a great character for a novel, that she was impressed and it was really well done. She even got other reads in the house but ultimately passed, saying Oriana was not well known enough but graciously offering notes.
I revised. A friend sent my manuscript to her agent who called, interested in my developing it. We had long brainstorming conversations, and she recommended a freelance editor, whom I hired, but after several revisions, the agent decided she couldn’t sell it.
In January 2020, I queried like crazy and got a dozen requests for fulls. A dream agent called my writing impeccable and adored the story but passed—again, not well known enough, etc. Forging ahead, I got three offers and signed a contract with the agent I had the best instinct about. Oriana went on submission in June 2020 during the third month of Covid lockdown, when editors were homeschooling kids and wiping down groceries. We got requests for fulls, excellent feedback, but no offers. I researched editors nonstop and forwarded names to my agent, who was open enough to submit to most of them.
I started a second novel in 2020 that saved my sanity, spending days in a new setting, with new characters, and practicing my craft.
In 2021, we were told an offer was forthcoming but it never came due to personnel changes. The same publisher promised a second offer in 2022, but sales and marketing vetoed it because they wanted Oriana to be American. By this point, I was 10 years into the process and wised-up enough to know this simply wasn’t the right publisher. Still, it was not fun to read my agent’s email that began “Horrible news.”
After two and a half years, I decided to end our partnership. In December 2022, I sat in front of the TV and researched literary and independent publishers who accepted unagented submissions. The list was slim.
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Luck was with me: The associate editor of Delphinium Books pulled Oriana out of her inbox and recommended it to the editorial director, an award-winning author and—more luck—an Italophile.
He wasn’t concerned that Oriana was little-known or “foreign”; that was the whole draw. He sent it to his publisher. I waited weeks and suddenly he called late one night: “We want to publish your novel.” Did I dance around and scream? Nope. My husband and I had new guests over for dinner. I served dessert.
The adage is true that we make our own luck. I had seen the name Delphinium in a New York Times book review and jotted it down on my endless list. I had polished the novel so that when opportunity knocked, it was ready.
The day the contract arrived, my friend Beth asked, “Are you pinching yourself?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “I can’t make heads or tails of this. I need a lawyer!”
Today, when I read acknowledgments, I’m still envious of authors’ close relationships with their agents. I identify with Oriana’s lament that she never had a protector. But Oriana said that fighting her own battles made her strong, and that’s what happened to me: I got good at rejection, good at perseverance, good at trusting my judgment about my work.
Ironically when drafting my own acknowledgements, I realized I was not nearly as alone as I’d imagined. So many friends and professionals offered encouragement and stepping stones along the way: My writing group formed in grad school; my reader friends who loved the story for a decade and listened to me say “I’m working” like a broken record and even fed me.
Still, I confess that a part of me resonates with Niecy Nash-Betts’ recent Emmy speech: “I want to thank me. For believing in me and doing what they said I could not do.”
I have a hunch that Oriana, never timid or self-effacing, would say the same.