WAGaBoD? Part 6: Submission is exactly that

Polish + submit + auction = book deal — it's that (stressfully, anxiously and time-warpingly) simple.

Another Thursday (eek, now it’s Friday somehow), another installment of WAIT. Annabelle Got a Book Deal?, where I take you high up into the branches of “The Mango Tree” to see how this book came to fruition. If you need to catch up, here are links to parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this series.

Last time, I told you how my extraordinary literary agent spent a year readying me and my manuscript for submission success. Today, we’re venturing down the nail-chewing rabbit hole that is submitting a book to editors and publishers in hopes of a landing a book deal. And then I’ve got fun book news to share, but first things first …

On submission

What exactly is submission? It is what it sounds like it is: giving yourself and your work over to strangers who will subject it to their personal judgments and whims, and then deem whether or not you/it are a fit for them and their publishing houses.

Fun! Fun!

Submitting a book to editors is a lot like querying literary agents: It’s a process fraught with rejections that you are not supposed to take personally but that, of course, you do.

Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash

But unlike querying agents, which is done alone with no one to buffer the pain of each blatant no, each zonk, each ghosting, submission is a tandem effort. It’s you and your agent working together to navigate the messy labyrinth that is the world of publishing. You do the writing. You work with your agent to polish and buff said writing, to build out a proposal that shows your book’s target audience, its comparable titles, and your credentials as a v. serious writing girly — and then, together, you go on submission.

Your agent reaches out to editors and tries to sell you and your work. And, when you get rejected, your agent is there to commiserate with you, tell you to buck-up-buttercup, remind you there are a lot of editorial fish in the publishing sea.

Waiting, bites

In the case of “The Mango Tree,” my agent sent our materials to 17 editors in the first round of submission. As the early rejections trickled in, for things as interesting and contradictory as too much childhood stuff … and … strong childhood voice! but she has too modest of a platform … I reverted to what I’d learned in journalism: Don’t read the comments.

Just as “Bill J. from Estero’s” comment on a restaurant review did nothing to make me a better food critic, these very specific, very individual comments on my submission materials would not, at this point, make my book markedly different. So, I stopped reading them. I let my agent collect them and keep them, but I stopped overanalyzing them.

My agent dutifully reminded me that every writer gets rejected, from e.e. cummings to Roxane Gay. Rejection is part of the publishing process, just as weird comments from men in Estero are, I guess, part of the restaurant-review process, maybe.

To my agent’s credit, she set up an agreed-upon system wherein she’d reach out every two weeks with submission updates. That is, unless we got a bite, then she’d reach out immediately. Two weeks (or 20 years) of rejection went by and then, there it was.

A bite.

When I tell you I was shocked and awed, it is not a lie. I had steeled myself for a months-long process. Submission is, in many cases, a marathon. Editors are busy. Marketing teams are busy. Publishers ARE BUSY. And for a book to sell, you need them all to slow down, take a moment, and read your damn book. Like your damn book. Like you. Like you AND your damn book so much, they want to buy it. For money. That’s a lot to ask of anyone, let alone 12+ someones you’ve never before met. Hence, my steeling.

Once that first bite came, we got another, and another. It was no longer shock and awe, but WAIT WHAT? REALLY? ARE THEY MISTAKING ME FOR ANOTHER ANNABELLE TOMETICH?? They were not.

A “bite” simply means interest. A bite usually leads to a call, which may then lead to a bid for your work — or it may not. These calls are for authors to feel out editors and vice versa. You want to see if they are a fit, get details on what they’re offering (royalties, book tour, publicity help, etc.), learn how they work. They do too.

I had three calls. I had three bids (!!!).

We were off to auction.

Sold! To paddle No. LBC

A publishing auction is nothing like a Sotheby’s auction or that auction I went to in North Fort Myers with a friend when I was 12 where her grandfather bought a used Winnebago and two hogs.

A publishing auction means more than two publishers are interested in buying a book, so they must now bid as much money as they are willing and able to bid in order to secure said book for themselves. An auction does not guarantee zillions of dollars for an author. Far from it. It merely means there is interest in a project and multiple parties willing to show specifically, in U.S. dollars, how far their interest goes.

My agent set up a two-round auction. In the first round, each publishing house emailed in its best and brightest bid. The highest monetary bid from that round was made public to all involved, and, in the second round, each publisher could meet that bid, exceed that bid, or bow out.

I was not obligated to go with the highest bid. In addition to the bids, each editor clarified things like royalty percentages, book-tour plans and marketing capabilities, details that matter very much when trying to have a successful debut book.

After weighing the pros and cons of each bid, each package, each editor, the final decision was mine to make. I did so in the parking lot of Costco, where I had to buy chicken wings for a Memorial Day barbecue. I sat in the driver’s seat of my Honda Odyssey, watching folks push heavy carts loaded with cases of sodas and jugs of laundry detergent, $4 rotisserie chickens in the slot where a child would go. It was the only time my agent and I could talk. I told her my choice: Little, Brown and Co. and their incredibly talented editor Vivian Lee (who, happy birthday btw!).

That was it. One year after finding an agent. Two years after deeply and thoroughly revising my manuscript. Three years after setting out on this book journey — in late May of 2022, we’d done it.

I had a book deal.

IN BOOK NEWS

Earlier this month, that diligent team at Little, Brown started sending advanced reader copies, aka ARCs or galleys, of THE MANGO TREE to bookshops, booksellers and critics. It is wild to know people beyond my close friends and family (and agent, and editorial team) are reading this thing.

Every post on social media (such as this one from the good people at Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia (who new Bulldogs were so nice?)) makes my heart flip and my head get fizzy. This is, in fact, real.

While ARCs are only for industry insiders, preorders are for everyone. And, as I outlined here in my cover reveal, preorders make a TREMENDOUS difference for debut authors such as myself.

If you have already preordered: THANK YOU. If you’re planning to preorder but haven’t had the time: THANK YOU, too. If you’d like to preorder more copies, for friends, colleagues, family, for mango lovers and mango haters the world over, please do! And please know you have my deepest gratitude.

Pre-order “The Mango Tree” — bookshop.org

Pre-order “The Mango Tree” — Barnes & Noble

Pre-order “The Mango Tree” — Target

Pre-order “The Mango Tree” — Books-A-Million

Pre-order “The Mango Tree” — Amazon