Yeah, so when I first go to sell my book, my agent is all like, “I just want to warn you, this is going to take a while. I am going to try and convince editors to move your book to the top of the reading pile, but still, it may be months before anyone even reads it.”
“Got it,” I said, not expecting anyone to read it, ever.
“And even if they do, you’re a first-time author, and they won’t have any prior record to go by,” he said. “You’re going to get some rejections.”
“No doubt,” I replied, fully expecting that they would ALL be rejections.
“Even after that, I’ve seen it take 6 months after an editor says they liked the book and them making an offer.”
“I’ll never get an offer. Got it.” I said. Or was it thought? Whatever.
“And if we get a sale, it’s not going to be a lot of money up front. They will want to see how it sells first. If it does good, you’ll be able to negotiate a better deal for the second book.”
“I’ll make shit and it won’t sell,” I said, steeling myself.
So the book goes out, and a week later, I get my first rejection. No surprise there. A week after that, another rejection. Then one the week after that.
Then, at a mere 3 weeks in, my agent calls.
“The editor for one of the biggest publishing houses in Fantasy just called,” he said. “She read your book over the weekend and loved it. She just gave her publisher the first 100 pages to read.”
“Holy crap,” I said.
“This is not a guarantee of anything,” he said. “Her boss has vetoed books from me before. But it’s a good sign.”
“Her boss will veto it,” I said. “Got it.”
3 hours later, he is forwarding me e-mails from other publishers. He’d told them someone was interested. Literally HALF of the original 10 publishers we sent to, 5 of the biggest publishers in the world, had started the book, and every single one of them was liking it so far.
Every. Single. One.
Remember, 3 of the original publishers we sent to had already rejected it. Which meant that out of the remaining 7 publishers, FUCKING SIX of them, were reading–and liking, MY book!
That was Monday afternoon.
On Wednesday, I get an e-mail from my agent. “They want to know if you have any other books planned in the series, and what the plots are. Do you have anything we can send them?”
“I guess,” I said. “The sequel is plotted out in meticulous detail, and I’ve written about 25% of it. Maybe 115 pages of stepsheet and prose. I have a couple dozen pages of notes on book three, too.”
“No, no,” he said. “They want like a three to four pages on the sequel, and another page on what’s after that, and they want it tomorrow. Can you whip that up tonight?”
“Dahr.” I said. “Yeah, sure.”
So I stayed up all Wednesday night, trying to boil all the intrigue and characters and POV shifts of book 2 into 4 pages while still covering all the important plot points. Around 2am, I started in on book three. By 3:30, I had my 5 pages, and e-mailed them to my agent. I went to bed. I didn’t sleep.
Thursday, bloodshot and bleary-eyed, I stumbled in to work and found my agent had already e-mailed me notes and comments. He didn’t change a lot, except in my cover letter, but he wanted almost another page on what would happen after book 2, if the series was popular enough to add more stories.
So I pounded away at that during lunch, and asked a few friends to proof it for me. By 3pm, I sent him a final .pdf of the 5 page proposal.
At 4pm, I get a call.
“Are you sitting down?” my agent asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“They want to buy three books,” he said. “The offer is over twice what I told you to expect for one, per book.”
“What?” I asked.
“They want to buy three books,” he said again. “The offer is over twice what I told you to expect for one, per book.”
“Dahr,” I said.
“In 20 years as an agent, I’ve never seen a first-time author get an offer for a fantasy novel so quickly, and for so much,” he said.
“Dahr,” I said.
“And it’s only the first offer, and we’re not taking it,” he said.
“What?” I asked, but he had already hung up.
An hour later he calls back, “I spoke to the other publishers,” he said. “Two more folded when they heard the size of your offer, but the others, the 4 biggest, didn’t blink at the cost, and want the weekend to have their senior people read the book. It looks like we may be moving to auction.”
“Auction?” I ask.
“I meet them behind closed doors and they have a bidding war,” he explained.
“No shit,” I said, feeling slightly nauseous. At this point he starts rattling off numbers and sales projections to me, and my eyes start to cross.
Plus, I still had work to do. You know, at my JOB? Much as I wanted to take the rest of the day off, I had people depending on me for shit, and somehow had to manage to focus back on work for another hour.
Then I went out and got roaring drunk with a couple of friends who had been instrumetal in keeping me focused on the book since I first started working on it like 7 years ago. I got home later that night, and had my agent explain everything to me again. Dani wrote it all down while I guzzled water and tried not to hurl from all the flaming toasted marshmallow shots I had drank.
Did I mention that people over 30 shouldn’t do shots? I probably should at this point. Ugh.
So on Friday, I am hung over, exhausted, and I still had too much to do at the day job and couldn’t call in sick. So I spend the day following the traffic as all the major publishers debate through the day. I had to keep running out to the elevator bank to take calls from my agent without the whole office hearing. One of my coworkers said I was turning into a diva, constantly running to talk to my agent.
We sat on our hands all fucking weekend. That was hard.
On Monday, two of the big four say they would buy the book, but they don’t want a bidding war. The third is undecided. The fourth will only participate in a 3-way bid.
I couldn’t take it anymore. “See if you can get another 25% on top of the original offer,” I said, sounding sure of myself even though I was freaking the fuck out. “If they agree, take it.”
So he hangs up, and 20 minutes later he calls me. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve just sold your first three books to one of the 2 biggest fantasy publishers in the world, at three times what I told you to expect.”
I didn’t say anything.
I still don’t believe it.
Fuck.
Posted on June 21, 2007 at 6:49 pm by PeatB
Filed under Life, Sales, Writing
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