Hi, I feel I am sucking you guys of all your wonderful advice and knowledge, so a big sorry but a bigger thank-you. It's just another how many question. When you're first novel went out on submission to editors, how many rejections did you get or was it picked up straight away? I am just so green when it comes to the publishing world, this whole experience is new. My agent forwrded on an email from an editor today with fantastic feed back but not wanting to buy it, however she wants to see the next ms I write if this one isn't sold. So it's good and bad, my agent just laughed when I went, Oh that's not good, she said we are just getting started. Is this your're experience? It's been out for a week now, though I'm not just sitting and waiting (promise) I am doing my 1300 words a day(see other post) Thanks guys, really appreciate all the feed back.

That's not bad at all, it's perfectly normal. Listen to your agent!

floweronmyhead, please don't be disheartened! It's very early days, and as an editor can rarely make an offer without recourse to their colleagues in sales, marketing etc. the whole process can take a few weeks - if not longer - before your agent gets that magic call. i.e. if an editor likes what they've read, they'll send it on to their colleagues asking them to read it before the next acquisitions meeting (that's the meeting with all interested parties: sales, marketing, editorial etc.) A decision whether or not to make an offer will be made at that meeting. I'm not sure how often these acquisitions meetings take place, but I imagine the timing of them would effect how quickly an editor gets back to your agent.

I think my agent sent my book out to twelve editors. One got back the very next day asking to meet up later that week. We did. The editor made some very good suggestion to revise the book prior to taking the book to the acquisitions meeting (which just proved to me how perfect an editor needs a book to be before they can convince everyone to get behind it). I made the changes, the editor took the book into the meeting, but it got shot down. The same thing happened with two other editors i.e. they couldn't get it past the acquisitions meeting either. Then, about two and a half weeks later, an editor got in touch and asked to meet up. We did. And they made an offer! I accepted. (Later, two other editors rang to make an offer, but too late.) The other six editors rejected the book straight off.

Anecdotal evidece from agents' and editors' blogs suggests one in ten debut mss get through the aquisition process to publication. Quite a lot get sent back with suggested rewrites, quite a lot get rejected because the publisher already has something similar in preparation. The thing is not to be disheartened but encouraged that it's got that far because it means you're on the right track and you will get published sooner or later.



- NaomiM

FWIW, My agent sent it to six, and said she'd give them three weeks (i.e., four weekends, because that's when editors do their reading.) I said, what do we do if they all turn it down, and she said, 'Send it out to the next six, and then the next six, and then...'

In the event, one publisher made an offer in ten days, whereupon she phoned round the others to see where they'd got to with it, and various other offers came in, but we ended up going with the first one.

They all have their different strategies. It is total agony, while you wait, and the only thing that helps is to be nice to yourself, and not beat yourself up if the writing's hard - it's horribly self-conscious-making, knowing that knowledgeable industry people hold your book's fate in their hands...

Good luck!

Emma

My agent sent out to heaps. Well, maybe eight or ten... and we'd had rejections from all of them by the time the one I ended up with finally bit. And they had sat on it, passing it up the line from pillar to post, from November to March before they made the offer. I'd written most of my next book in the meantime! OK, so for some people it's far, far quicker. But don't start to ret if it all seems to take forever. That's the way it is sometimes.

Rosy x

But don't start to ret if it all seems to take forever. That's the way it is sometimes.

Yes, very true. It so depends how often they have acquisitions meetings, and whether everyone who needs to agree is at it, and so on and so on.

Emma

Yup - retting is really bad. Never let yourself ret. (Wish I could type!)

There are no hard and fast rules:

http://internspills.blogspot.com/2010/02/of-writers-magazines-and-art-of.html

A week's nothing, trust me. And it sounds as if your first rejection was a 'good' one, so fingers crossed someone else will bite soon!

I said, what do we do if they all turn it down, and she said, 'Send it out to the next six, and then the next six, and then...'

What would she do after 18 rejections, do you think? 20 seems to be roughly the standard before agents start giving up - which covers all the major houses in London, and the biggest indies. Would she start submitting to tiny presses in Australia and the US, or would she draw the line at anything smaller than, say, Serpent's Tail? Just curious!

I think it also depends on the type of book.
Some books don't have as many natural homes as others. I remember having a discussion with my agent about it and him telling me that he had a list of about eight ot ten.
HBx

Trilby (sorry - MF, in deference to new members) I don't know how small she'd go. She does have a living to earn, and also would want to establish a new author with a mainstream house if possible, so I should imagine that at some point, depending very much on what was said in the rejections (which is where an agent can get hold of so much more info than we can), rather than go for the teenies, she would either suggest re-working the book or putting it on hold and waiting for the next one. I know I've said it before on WW, but she took 2 years to sell A Curious Incident.

Some books don't have as many natural homes as others.

Yes, I think that's very true. An awful lot of publishers have, say, a high-end commercial women's fiction list, but some just don't do fantasy at all, say. Except when the list is super-literary, in which case genre isn't the point so much and anything goes, as long as it'll win them the Booker.

When my agent talked about the editors she'd send TMOL to, the main thinking seemed to be, 'Who's got books in that part of the market, but nothing quite like yours, and so would like to plug a gap in the list?' Which is yet one more reason for not modelling your work closely on someone big-selling. They don't need another Marian Keyes...

Emma