I wrote my first novel in 2005 and shortly after finishing it I began querying agents. This began more than a decades-long journey of submissions and rejections. Along the way, though, I received a lot of positive feedback and helpful critiques. I honed my craft. Networked. Went to conferences. Joined forums. And, all the while, I kept writing. And I kept dreaming. Dreaming of that coveted book deal. Of book signings. Of seeing my novel on shelves. Of holding a finished book in my hand.
In 2011, on a holiday weekend no-less, I received 2 rejections and both were from agents who had requested pages and seemed genuinely interested. This was the first time I thought about quitting. Spoiler alert: it wouldn’t be the last. Instead of giving up, though, I made an equally bold decision to take control of my career and self publish. I had a young adult series I’d written and I followed Amanda Hocking’s model of releasing the books one right after the other, discounting the first one and then ascending from there.
The books did okay. Not enough to quit my dayjob, but enough to call myself a professional writer. And enough to keep me going. I released several more books and each one seemed to propel my career further ahead. By the seventh book (and a year and a half in), I was making decent money and I was able to quit my dayjob and write full time.
From 2012 - 2018, I released over thirty indie titles. Most of them were young adult and my most popular ones were sports romances. On my worst months I made a few hundred dollars and on my best months I made over $12k. I probably averaged around $3-4k.
But, as with any kind of publishing, there were ups and downs out of my control. I won’t go into all the details, but in 2016, my income took a significant hit and I could no longer afford to write full time. By 2018, it seemed I could barely afford to still self publish. This was the second time I thought about quitting.
I didn’t, though. Instead, I decided to once again pursue traditional publishing. I’d had an idea for a psychological thriller knocking around in my head for years, ever since I’d first learned of the other Amber Garza in my town. The random idea I had one day of “what if we met and wanted eachother’s lives?” had been percolating and I finally decided to sit down and write the book in 2018. That idea became WHEN I WAS YOU and I started pitching it to agents in January of 2019.
Prior to self publishing, I always struggled to pitch my novels; to come up with a strong hook and opening paragraph for my query letter. But I think the biggest issue was that I always queried with the agent and publisher in mind. That’s honestly how I came up with my ideas too. I was always trying to write what I thought agents were looking for, not what I wanted to write.
But self publishing taught me to think about my audience. To writeto my reader and to pitch to my reader. Self publishing taught me the art of writing great back-cover copy and great hooks. And, quite honestly, it taught me how to write a great book.
I used this knowledge and experience to write the log line and opening paragraph of my query letter and it worked! I sent my query letter to around 40 agents and I received 12 requests for the full, one even came within 10 minutes of me sending the email. From those 12 requests, 6 agents offered representation.
Furthermore, within two months of signing with my agent WHEN I WAS YOU went to auction in the US (resulting in a six-figure deal) and the UK, sold in a significant pre-empt in France, to seven other countries and to film.
I hear a lot of stories of authors getting deals because of their enormous success in self publishing, and while that’s not exactly my story, I do credit my years of writing, honing my craft and learning the art of the pitch as my reason for finally realizing my dream.
The moral of the story is that if you want to get published, write what you love. Write what you want to read. And then pitch it like you would want to hear it.
Think about the books you are drawn to. Think about the two-sentence pitches you hear online that make you race to buy a book or the back cover copy you read in a store that gets you to put that book in your cart. And write with that in mind.
Querying requires patience and grit, but I believe in you. You got this!