If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.
Today’s guest for the SHIT is Kim Long, author of Lexi Magill and the Teleportation Tournament.
How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?
Very little! I knew there was a pitch letter from my agent and then, if the editor was interested, there would be a request for a full. Well, with my first agent, there was no request—she just emailed the full, which confused me. I would hear from other writers about “editor requests” and meanwhile I’d heard nothing on my end. I finally asked my then-agent, “Do we know if they’re reading?” Lol. I learned quickly (and this was back in 2015 when my first MG went on sub) that agents do things differently. This time around, I asked my agent straight out what her process was, how many editors she did in round one, when she would do a round 2, etc. I knew more, so I was able to ask more.
Did anything about the process surprise you?
Somewhat surprising that some editors wouldn’t respond to my agent’s pitch, even to say, “Not for me, thanks.”
Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?
Sort of. I looked on Publisher’s Marketplace to see what they’d bought recently and I looked them up on Twitter, but I didn’t follow them or actively check their twitter feeds other than the first check to see who they were. I’m not sure I’d recommend or not recommend that approach. I like having information, so it was interesting to take a look, but in the end the info I collected wasn’t earth-shattering.
What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors?
With most, we heard if they would read in a week or so, but I can say that there was a good four-to-five week delay before we heard back from the editor who eventually offered (Allison Cohen at Running Press Kids)! Just timing, I suppose. Then, it was about three weeks later she told my agent (they actually met up in New York at Book Expo) she liked it. For editors who passed, I’d say we heard back within a couple weeks to a few months. There were some we did not hear back from, though.
What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety?
I know it’s cliché, but I’d have to go along with, “Write something else.” I wasn’t very anxious this last time around because I was already invested in another manuscript. I really felt like if this one didn’t sell, it wasn’t a huge letdown because I’d have something new to go out soon. Once it sunk in that it wasn’t an an all-or-nothing and there are other books to sub, the whole submission process was easier for me to handle.
If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?
I have not had a single mean rejection (yet!). Most were very complimentary. It went to second reads a couple different places, but even with the straight rejects, it was either, “Love the concept, not the voice” or “Love the voice, not enthralled with the concept.” There was nothing to get to bummed out about. It was kind of like querying in that it was a shrug of the shoulder, and that was about it. The one difference was that, with agents, I could revenge query. With sub, I couldn’t, and a no from one editor at an imprint is a no from that imprint. There definitely was more of a feeling of a finite list of editors who could be subbed to, which certainly made me anxious from time to time.
When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?
It was a very surreal experience, for sure. My agent met the editor at BEA, and she said she loved it and was going to take it to her team. To me, this sounded a lot like second reads, and well, as I had been down that road before, I was like, “Okay, fine.” Then my agent told me that this was more like acquisitions at this press, not just straight second reads, so I did start feeling a bit jittery. The week of the meeting came and went without us hearing anything . . . which I actually took as a good sign because if it was a No, that’d be a quick email, right? Right? So the following Monday, I was at work, had a meeting, and when I got back to my office, I had a text from my agent, CALL ME. I grabbed my phone and went down to the building’s lounge area. Sure enough, OFFER!! It didn’t seem real at all!
Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?
Nope! Everything happened so, so quickly. The major terms were agreed to in about a week, and my agent said that they wanted to announce ASAP because my publication date would be Fall 2019. (Remember, this is late June, so Fall 2019 was not that far away!) It was funny because whenever I’d hear about books coming out in a year or so, I’d be like, “That’s such a long time from now.” But when I was told Fall 2019, my thought was, “Really, that soon?” Lol. Anyway, we announced maybe a week or two later!
And yes, there are times I still can’t believe it’s true! This was my second manuscript that went out on sub, and it’s actually the second time this manuscript was on sub, as my previous agent had lightly subbed it back in 2016. It’s been a long road, for sure, but I’m glad we didn’t give up on this manuscript and that it found a good home.
