Tag Archives: querying

Submission Stories # Part 2 (blog post 10 of series)

Posted on by vgemmell

This post is about the Journey of Book 2: Promise Me. You can buy my books here.

I’ve tried to strike a balance in this post, of being completely transparent, but not too negative, as ultimately I’m writing these posts to encourage anyone reading to keep going, and to not give up, whichever direction you decide to go with your writing.

When my debut Follow Me was released in 2015 I knew my publisher was interested in reading my next stand-alone, Promise Me.  I was now doing talks and creative workshops in schools and the community, chatting to librarians and slowly building ‘an audience’. Reviews were also starting to come in for Follow Me, and teenagers talked to me about the book at events. (I also got interviewed for Teen Titles magazine at one school).

For the first time in my writing life I was suddenly acutely aware of who might read my new book when it was released, and what their expectations might be. This put a low-level pressure on my creativity; something I had never really experienced before.

I was also trying to juggle the events, (always feeling I was never doing enough compared to other writers I was connected to on social media), whilst working full time. I stupidly went for a promotion at my day job (and got it), all before Promise Me was done and dusted. But it was a time in my life where I felt super-motivated and had more energy (I was younger!!), and the excitement of having a ‘book out’ always spurred me on.

When I had nearly finished my first draft of Promise Me I entered it into the SAW Pitlochry and won second place. The crime writer who adjudicated told me she could imagine her teenage daughter really enjoying having a teen sleuth at the centre of trying to solve the mystery of a crime that had already occurred. I felt this was a good selling point too, and it kept me motivated to get the book finished. I signed the contract for publication in 2017.

Fast-forward two years, copy edits done, release dates promised, then passed, with no response, and so began a repeat cycle. In amongst this a lovely librarian offered to launch Promise Me in her community library in a local area where I had done several events; another librarian wanted to book me for her new festival which would tie in to local schools to promote the release of the book. My publisher knew all of this, and still silence.

I never feel comfortable going into detail about this in a public forum, but needless to say, this was a not a great time for my creative confidence (especially when I genuinely did not know how to explain to the librarians, or to anyone, what was happening, as I had no idea what was happening!).

Every time I heard the question, ‘When’s your next book coming out?’, deep down I felt like a failure.  

I realise now that the people who persistently asked this question hadn’t even read my first book, and had no intention of buying my next one, but the amount of pressure and frustration I felt at the time was immense.

My advice: ignore the external pressures, unless it’s from someone who is involved in bringing your next book to life, and they’re actually nudging out of necessity, or to give you encouragement

The thought of going back out on submission filled me with dread (as the average time of your book seeing the light of day after acceptance, never mind how long it takes to get there, can usually be around 2 years) But I knew I had hit a brick wall with the current situation.

So, at the end of 2019 I took the rights back for Promise Me. I was also in the middle of writing my new YA thriller (Young Blood).

I started to send out Promise Me again to select agents (I was being fussy), but mostly got rejections, or no response. Then I noticed a new publisher was running an open submissions competition for Young Adult novels. I scoured the rules and realised it was open for published writers, as long as you didn’t have an Agent. (Most big competitions like Chicken House and Bath Novel etc. are only open for unpublished writers– see the end of the post for links to these).  

The publisher was professional and dynamic, and making waves, so I excitedly sent off my work.

Fast forward a few months later I received an email to let me know I’d made the long list. The day I moved into my new house in 2020 I received an email from the editor saying I had made the final seven. It was a massive boost. I didn’t win, but the editor had a chat with me and said the book sellers and librarians on the judging panel were very positive about my book. She also offered me some really helpful editorial feedback.

At this point some writers in my network were taking control back, and independently publishing their work. I had watched my Mum do this to a high standard, and she kept saying it was another option I could try.

Not long after this, I entered a call-out for a Zoom pitch event with a big agency. I was selected by the agent to have a chat.

Weirdly she recognised my name as she had been copied in to one of the emails relating to the acquisitions meeting for Follow Me at ‘the big publisher’ I mentioned in my last post. (She was an editor with them at the time).

The agent was really enthusiastic about Promise Me, said she loved the first few chapters and premise, and asked me to send through the full manuscript.

A few months went by with no emails, so I sent a polite ‘nudge’. I received an apology, saying she was behind in reading. I appreciated the update.

Then another six months went by, so I sent another polite email. And never received a response.

To this day, I never did get a response.

I totally understand that agents are busy people. Plenty of agents have ignored me during ‘cold submissions’ which is fine, because most will clearly state on their website, if you have not heard from us in X amount of weeks, we’re not interested.

But when you’ve had a full manuscript request, and a face-to-face chat (it was on Zoom because we were still in semi-lockdown), I think it’s rude to leave someone hanging.

At the time I wish I had used this website called Query Tracker see here You can sign up for free and it provides information on pitching to agents, but also people leave feedback on response times and reply rates from agents they’ve subbed to. The aforementioned agent now runs her own agency, and interestingly lots of people have posted on this site with the exact same experience as me; ghosted after full requests following on from personal contact during pitch events.

During lockdown when life slowed down, it gave me proper time to reflect on what I actually wanted from my writing career. I asked one of my career guidance friends to give me a coaching interview, and this helped me unpick my motivations and priorities.

She asked me an important question: What was stopping me from taking control myself, and independently publishing?

I realised the biggest thing stopping me was fear of perceived external judgement. Who does she think she is….Clearly she’s not good enough if she has to do this herself… We’re not interested in self-published books at this bookshop. But when I unpicked this further I realised none of my worries related to my actual readers. These thoughts related to other writers I knew, random people in my life…mostly ones who had never even read my first book, or cared about it enough to support any attempts at promotion, and gatekeepers (like bookshops *I’ll focus a bit more on the gatekeeper aspect in my next post*).

Returning to the point that the folk who usually ask the most demanding and nosey questions about my writing life (and probably yours), …How many books have you sold? Why’s your next one not out yet?  Are you not quitting your day job yet? Why aren’t you in a window display or the Buy one Get one free in Waterstones? Are you not speaking at X book festival?

..are usually the ones who haven’t even read my work, and are never going to buy my books, even if I get a 5 figure book deal and it’s optioned for film...

In fact those people would probably be the first to ask: How much did you get for your film deal?

I want to point out here that I don’t mind being asked questions about my writing at all, if the intention is good. And I 100% don’t expect everyone in my life to champion my work!  It just made me realise, I shouldn’t care so much about what people think about me and my work, definitely not to the point of stopping me exploring new ways of getting my book out there.

A few months later, I bit the bullet and started the process of Independently publishing Promise Me. It had already gone through many professional copy-edits, I’d received further editorial feedback after the open submissions competition, and I was very fortunate that my Mum is great at editing, and is a genius when it comes to all of the technical support needed to format and publish.

I had already dabbled in releasing a short story collection, and my designer friend Dainty Dora (see site here) aka Rebecca,  supported with a great cover design for this, so I enlisted Rebecca’s support again for the cover of Promise Me.

Promise Me was released into the world in October 2021 and I went with wider distribution, meaning it’s fully available everywhere. I hosted an online launch on release day through Facebook which generated enough sales to put my sales ranking on Amazon alongside big sellers like Holly Jackson. (If you like A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder you might like my books, just sayin’) Those kind of figures are fleeting, but it gave me a huge boost on the day to know people were interested enough to buy my new book.

A screenshot of Promise Me in the Top Ten – glad I captured this moment

A librarian friend also invited me to take part in an online group workshop for a teen writing group, and last Spring I was part of the Paisley book festival schools programme, with Promise Me promoted and bought into libraries. During another school event not long after publication, a highlight was seeing teachers sitting reading my book when I arrived to the class for the session, telling me how much they were enjoying it. Last year an English teacher in a school I’m connected to in my day job said that Promise Me is never on the school library shelves and she often sees pupils reading it. After such a long up-and-down road with this book, every single moment like that means so much to me.

Next time I’ll post a bit more about my experiences of Independent Publishing.

In the meantime, I hope this post hasn’t put you off trying the traditional route, as it’s something I know I will attempt again (due to some of the cons that come with Independent Publishing).

If you’re unpublished and have a novel ready to send I recommend trying one of these big competitions which are closing soon

Chicken House Books Competition – for Children/YA books– closing 2nd June

Bath Novel Award – for both Young Adult and General (adult) fiction Closing 31st May

Bridport Prize – General Novel – Closing 31st May

Keep an eye out on Mslexia Competitions – they have run both General novel and Children’s/YA in the past

Happy Writing!

Submission Stories #Part 1 (blog post 9 of series)

Posted on by vgemmell

In these posts I’m moving more into a personal ‘behind the scenes look’ at my submission experiences for my three Young Adult books. I’ll do a post for each book. I’m doing these posts because I love to read about other author’s journeys. I find it motivates me and makes me feel less alone in what is quite a mad creative world. Also for all three books I’ve had very different experiences, which resulted in me taking more personal control.

Prior to ‘Book 1’ there were other books, but I refer to them as my practice novels. I completed my first typed ‘novel’ (as opposed to the many, let’s call them ‘novellas’, I had written in jotters) when I was about thirteen, and received my first rejection from a major publisher.  I wrote a magic realism contemporary novel in my early twenties and sent this out to a few publishers and one agent. I randomly met the agent’s assistant at an event and he said he pulled my book out of the slush pile and enjoyed it. (The agent making the decisions, didn’t). Years later I bumped into him at another event and he asked what happened to it. I am sure you are thinking I should have persisted with this one. But I felt I could write better, and by that point I had started to focus more on writing Young Adult, because most of the ideas that were forming in my head seemed to lend themselves better to having teen protagonists. So here’s some highlights of my submission journey with my debut Young Adult novel, which eventually did reach publication back in 2015.

Book 1 – Follow Me

When I first started writing Follow Me something took over. It was the first time a book seemed to take on a life of its own and perhaps because I was living alone at the time, once I had established a basic plot, characters, and written my prologue (which set the tone and gave my protagonist a ‘voice’), every time I sat down I was able to immerse myself fully in the world.

A couple of people who read Follow Me talked about the ‘hypnotic’ characters and feeling like the writing contained some kind of undefinable ‘magic’. I mention this, not to ‘big up’ my book (though I will always have a soft spot for this story), but because it aligns to how I felt early on when ideas and chapters unfolded. I could feel the magic driving this one, and I knew deep down this was going to be ‘the one’; the book I was going to get published, because it was the first time I properly felt like I knew what I was doing structurally, and was excited by the story and characters. Also, something in my mindset had changed. I had started to send out short stories, and was reaching publication, and being placed in competitions. I was starting to believe I could be a ‘serious writer’.

When I had nearly finished my first draft I submitted the book to the TC Farries competition at the Scottish Association of Writer’s conference and won first place.

A well-established children’s author was the adjudicator, and said it contained the ‘magic’ needed to captivate a YA audience. This gave me the confidence to finish it, fine tune my manuscript and start subbing to agents. Colleagues at the time discovered print-outs of my first few chapters and their excitement at reading, and wanting to continue reading (along with my Mum’s encouragement, and another writing friend) all kept me going…

And then when I started to sub to agents I got emails from about three asking very quickly to read the full manuscript. I was on tenterhooks waiting for replies as you can imagine.  But then the rejections started coming in.

Here’s a snapshot of some rejections.

Unfortunately, the premise involving twins is too similar to another title on our list. We wish you the best of luck with placing your work.

Many thanks for sending me your submission, which I read with interest. I’m afraid, however, that I didn’t feel passionately enough about it to offer you representation. You write well, but I’ve just taken on a book which deals with teen suicide so this feels too close to it for me. Our business is subjective by nature and another agent may well feel differently. I wish you the best of luck with that.

I realise now how lucky I was to get some personalised feedback. The landscape of publishing has changed a lot and it can be rare now to get any response.

The most disappointing knock-back was a rejection from an agent I met face to face at a York Writing Festival who was so excited when she read my first three chapters, and was so lovely in person. The type of agent I would have been happy to work with! Interestingly I really didn’t gel with a different agent at my other 1:1 and she suggested quite a graphic, dramatic change to part of my opening which made me feel uncomfortable. This experience showed me the importance of finding the right agent or publisher. Someone you connect with, and who understands your story.

This was the rejection email from the excited agent (I had to wait over 6 months for this, and it felt like a loooong wait):

As you know, I was really excited by your novel when we met in York, and I very much enjoyed reading the complete manuscript. It’s stayed with me and I’ve been ruminating on it since. The premise to the novel is really interesting and I think you write very well for this market. I love sister/twin stories too! I do think there is a lot of potential here, but I’m afraid I don’t think, at the moment, this stands out in what is a crowded market. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but do bear in mind that another agent may feel differently.

I was gutted to get such a positive rejection.

I kept going.

A BIG publisher were doing a call-out for a new teen digital-only imprint, and wanted the full manuscript emailed.

I received this exciting response from one of their editors: Thank you for sending Follow Me to xx for our consideration. I enjoyed reading it and think that your accessible voice matched with the dark and emotional subject matter makes it well suited to the list. …..  (The email then contained some editorial suggestions)…Of course we would discuss all of this later should we decide to acquire Follow Me but I just wanted to check with you before I share the script with the rest of the team whether Follow Me is still available for publication and if you would be open to editorial suggestions such as those I’ve mentioned.

I responded positively. A month later I got this response:

I just wanted to let you know that because it’s been so hectic here, I haven’t taken Follow Me to our acquisitions meeting yet, but I hope to do so next Wednesday and so I should have a decision for your shortly after that.

Then… SILENCE.  Six months later, still nothing.

Around this time I met a different publisher, who ended up taking Follow Me, at a networking event. I nearly didn’t speak to him, because I had already submitted Follow Me to them via their website submission process, but he said he didn’t remember reading it, they’d had server issues, so to email through the whole manuscript.

I emailed the big publishing house to let them know a Scottish publisher had shown interest, and another editor got back to me apologising saying the first editor had gone on maternity leave. She asked me to keep her posted on what happened, and she would read my submission again. Because I was offered print publication (and because the big house had just kept me hanging) I accepted the offer from the Scottish publisher. I had received an email from the Scottish publisher one night saying they had finished reading Follow Me and asked to meet me. Because of the ‘nearly there moments I’d had already’, I still wouldn’t let myself believe it was going to be positive news. But it  was at the face to face meeting I received an offer for publication.

It was fast-moving from there. The meeting took place at the start of April, with a publication date set for October the same year (this is very rare). It was a whirlwind which led to lots of doors opening for me in terms of opportunities to do talks and workshops in schools and in the community. I’ll talk more about those another time. The rollercoaster of ups AND downs continued, something I don’t think many people prepare you for, when you reach the goal of publication.

And sadly, with my second book I found myself back out on submission. I’ll focus on parts of that story in post 2.

I’ll leave you with some things I learned along the way from the first part of this journey:

My tips:

Spend time preparing your submission. Perfect your synopsis and intro email, along with the sample chapters. Follow the submission rules (you’re doing yourself and your book a disservice if you can’t take the time to read these properly and get them right).

If an agent, editor, or publisher takes the time to give you feedback, know that this means they really do see potential in your work and if the feedback contains constructive criticism, take time to reflect and take on board what they say

If you’re pitching to agents and you have the opportunity to pitch to them in person (to allow a face to face conversation) take it! A five minute conversation can tell you so much about the other person, and a two-way conversation allows you to see if they are on the same wavelength about your book

If you’ve spent time perfecting your craft, your book is well-written and enticing, your success now is going to rely a lot on being in the right place at the right time, connecting with the right agent/publisher, and persistence

Related to this: make the most of any writing related networking events you are invited to. Sometimes introductions to the right people means you are noticed and remembered when submitting/pitching

Don’t send your book out to one agent at a time. Any agent who says they want an exclusive read is worth avoiding (unless you’ve made some sort of personal connection with them, but even then I would say no- you’ll find out why in my next blog post). They can take six months, or more, to get back to you (IF AT ALL – the ghosting is real). A lot of very successful authors have had their manuscripts rejected 20 + times, so do your maths on that one. if they were sending them out one at a time, waiting months for responses

Forge friendships with creatives who understand the pain of the ups and downs of this journey. If you detect jealousy and negativity try to spend more time with people who lift you up. Trust me, at ALL times in this weird creative world, even when folk think you are doing well, you need to surround yourself with positive people

And to help us all keep the faith, some famous rejections:

Lisa Genova, Still Alice: about 100 rejections (or non-replies) from agents (info from Lithub.com)

After getting very little positive feedback, Genova opted to self-publish her book. Eventually, it was acquired and re-issued by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, and proceeded to spend 40 weeks on the New York Times best seller list, and was made into a film.

Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife: 25 rejections from agents.

After getting rejected by 25 agents, Niffenegger sent the book directly to a small San Francisco publisher, where an editor discovered and loved it. It became a best seller and was also made into a film.

One of my favourite books of recent years was Lessons in Chemistry. Here’s an interview with author Bonnie Garmus at Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper (you can read the full interview here https://www.mariashriversundaypaper.com/bonnie-garmus-lessons-in-chemistry/) – Did you indeed receive 98 rejections before Lessons in Chemistry?

“Yes! And they were all from agents. What happened was I had written a novel that was approximately 700 pages…Finally, agent number 98 said that she would read part of it…She wrote back the next day and said, ‘You write well, but you don’t understand this industry…’ The email was pretty nasty, but it was also a very big help. She said, ‘No one’s going to look at a debut author’s 700-page novel—ever. Do yourself a favor and write a novel of appropriate length, and you can send me that when you finish’—which I never did. But that all turned into Lessons in Chemistry. I started completely new. “

Reading these stats makes me realise I’ve never been this persistent. Talent, persistence and resilience. These are the magic ingredients.