Earlier I wrote about how I got my literary agent, and now I will talk about what it’s like being on submission with my first book. We started with revisions for my book REBEL WITH TIME, and we revised for three months in total before we went on submission in October 2020. At first my agent pitched my book with a sample chapters attached to editors. After a while we got some feedback that they were interested to read the book. My agent sent the book to the editor which meant only %1 of the editors actually requested the full manuscript. Is it because editors are requesting less these days, or that my opening chapters and pitch weren’t strong?
Then it was silence until January 2021, when my agent pitched to other editors, and one of them requested the full manuscript. Again it was 1% of the editors requesting the full. Within a few months my agent already pitched to many editors, and five of them requested the manuscript so far. So I waited from October to March and no reply yet, and it’s 2021 second year of the pandemic so editors are slow in responding to agents. It can be frustrating to authors who are waiting for a reply. We all want to get a book deal, but realistically there will be books that won’t sell at all. I tried to start writing many books, but failed to complete a book during submission, because I was really stressed about getting a book deal! Don’t do what I did, start a new book after your agent sends out your book to editors. You have to distract yourself, and you also need to prepare in case your first book didn’t sell then you will have another book to submit later on.
As a self published author, I didn’t get many sales from my books, so that might be something that publishers will look at when they decide on buying a book. My book REBEL WITH TIME was self published but I kept promoting in in newspapers, radio stations, articles and other. I was on a radio station with 700,000 listeners who all knew about my book title and what’s it about.
I hope one day if I do get a book deal for my book REBEL WITH TIME, I would write another post of how I got a book deal. Stay optimistic, and never lose hope!
