Shhh...I Have "The Secret" to Getting Published

Good morning, authors! I’m gonna switch gears a little bit and talk about the number one thing it takes to become a published author—the number one thing every published author has. The question is, do you have it?

What is this one thing, you wonder?

It’s really quite simple.

I’ll tell you, but you probably should sit down first.

Are you sitting?

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Thank you. That’s much better.

That one thing every published author has is PATIENCE.

That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?

Well, desired information or not, it’s fact. The one thing separating the published author from the author with a handful of forgotten manuscripts gathering dust in a desk drawer is PATIENCE.

Some of you may know or have heard of author, Joy McCullough, whose debut YA title, Blood Water Paint, was long listed for the National Book Award and won both the Washington State and Pacific Northwest book awards.

Joy is the poster child for PATIENCE.

Before landing her first agent, Joy wrote five middle grade manuscripts and sent out nearly 300 queries. Elated to finally get an agent, she was beyond thrilled when that first title when on submission.

Unfortunately, it didn’t sell.

Neither did the next title.

Nor the title after that.

With no book title to celebrate, she parted with her agent and eventually signed with a new agent who then put yet another of her titles on submission.

Yup, you guessed it. That title didn’t sell either.

It wasn’t until Joy’s tenth manuscript—on its fifth round of submissions—that Joy finally received a publishing offer!

Joy’s debut title, Blood Water Paint, was published in 2018 by Atheneum, a Simon & Schuster imprint.

It’s now 2024, and Joy has twelve published titles to her credit with books thirteen and fourteen coming in 2025.

And would you like a little bit of trivia about Joy’s twelfth published title?

You should probably sit down again.

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Thank you!

Okay, hold onto your seats.

Joy’s twelfth published book, Basil & Dahlia: A Tragical Tale of Sinister Sweetness, is the exact same title that was on submission with her first agent nearly ten years ago and didn’t sell. About this title, Joy says, “With time and different circumstances, we sold it with very little revision.”

I would add only one small thing to Joy’s statement: With time, PATIENCE, and different circumstances, it sold with very little revision.

PATIENCE. It’s what separates the author who’s finished writing a book from the author who’s published a book.

The querying process can be challenging, but it’s only one step in the long process of seeing your book published. But PATIENCE is that magic ingredient you’ll need if you want to find success.

I signed my client, Erica Lucke Dean, three years ago on a Young Adult manuscript titled Chasing Stardust. Before signing with me, Erica had been with another agency for another YA title we later renamed Love, Lies & Too Many Guys, then renamed again to Kennedy Beaman’s Best Laid Plan. Whatever you do, don’t ask what the original title of that manuscript was! There’s not enough vomiting emojis to fully express my dislike for the original title.

For two-and-a-half years, we tried selling both titles to no avail. And to Erica’s credit, she never once complained about how long it was taking, or asked if it was time to shelve the manuscripts. She trusted the process, and thankfully, she trusted me. But as her third year on submission approached and we’d run out of YA editors with no deal in sight, we decided it was time to think outside the box.

We knew Erica was a great writer, and her stories are some of the best I’ve ever read, so neither of us were ready to give up. So we put our heads together and came up with a plan: we would take them off of submission, Erica would take the next six months to edit and age the characters up from Young Adult to that weird new category known as New Adult, and try again. What could it hurt, right?

It took Erica nearly six months before Chasing Stardust was ready, and Kennedy Beaman’s Best Laid Plan was only a couple of weeks behind it. With a deep breath and a small prayer to the publishing gods, I made up a list of editors and Erica was on submission once again.

Roughly three weeks later, we got our first strong nibble, and two weeks after that, we knew an offer was coming in. By the time the official Deal Memo had arrived, the editor had requested to see Kennedy Beaman, and the offer we received was a pre-empt for both titles. After three years on submission with Chasing Stardust—and even longer for Kennedy Beaman—Erica’s patience had finally paid off. And not just in a single book deal, but a pre-empt on a two-book deal!

For those who don’t know, a pre-empt is when a publisher offers as much of an advance as they reasonably can for the title in question then gives only a short time period (usually 24 hours or less) to accept or decline. The idea is for the offer to be significant enough that the author and their agent will take the manuscript off the table and make it unavailable to all other publishers. And in this case, it worked.

The moral of both of these stories is this: “The Secret” to Getting Published is PATIENCE.

And with that, I’ll leave you with these statistics I learned from a keynote speaker at the Colorado Gold Writers’ Conference a couple of weeks ago:

• 85% of the population want to write a book

• 15% of the population start writing a book

• 3% of the population finish writing a book

• 1% of the population publish a book

If you’ve started writing a book, you’ve already beaten the odds.

If you’ve finished writing a book, you’ve beaten insurmountable odds.

You’re now in the top three-percent, and the leap from three-percent to one-percent isn’t much farther than the distance it takes to jump over a small puddle.

So why in the world would you quit now when you’re right on the cusp of finally achieving your dreams?

“To lose patience is to lose the battle.” ~ Mahatma Ghandi

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Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong is a literary agent with Marsal Lyon Literary Agency and represents adult fiction. You can view Cathie’s Manuscript Wishlist Here.

Vicky Weber is a literary agent with Creative Media Agency and represents adult and children’s fiction. You can view Vicky’s Manuscript Wishlist Here.

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