Q03: Submission Time

(This post is part of a larger subseries entitled Perpetual WIPs: Pre-Pub Authors. To see the rest of the questions posed, click here.)

How long were you on submission/querying publishers? How long did it take before you were permitted to announce your deal, and what factors went into that decision?

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I was on sub for two months before the first offer, and I waited twice that long to announce the deal. It’s my agency’s policy to wait until the contract has been fully negotiated. I would have waited anyway, despite how hard it was to keep that secret! (I’ve heard one or two horror stories of an acquiring editor leaving the house or deals falling through before a contract is finalized…)

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I was on submission for a little less than a week. I was allowed to announce almost immediately once the deal was finalized (which was about a week after the first offer, after hearing back from other publishers and choosing which one to go with). I’m not really sure what factored into it. I just know both my agent and my editor were fine with me announcing it, so I did! (One thing I do know is that my agent doesn’t usually do PM announcements, so didn’t care if I waited for that.)

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I was on submission for a little less than a week and was able to announce about a month after.

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I only queried with this book to two publishers, both of whom I met in person at BEA. The book was already out with several agents, but all declined even after I’d been made an offer. Once the contract was signed, I was allowed to announce the sale as soon as the deal was published in Publisher’s Marketplace. It was only a couple of weeks between initial offer and official announcement. As a side note, with a previous novel, I submitted to agents for almost two years with several nibbles of interest, but no contracts.

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I was on submission for a couple of weeks. The Bookseller announced my deal just a few weeks later. I didn’t really have any decision in that process.

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Ha! I was one of the lucky ones. I went on sub and had interest 2 weeks later and an offer shortly after that. But then I didn’t get to announce my deal for 3 months which was sort of painful. My agent wanted the contract signed and all set before she announced it. I know not all agents do that, but I think because it was my very first, she wanted everything dotted and crossed. I’m a terrible secret-keeper so I would’ve announced right away if she hadn’t said, “keep this quiet.”

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I was on submission for a month and two weeks. Not too long, really! Though of course it felt like forever. I was allowed to announce my deal after a little over a week, when the deal went up on Publisher’s Marketplace.

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I was on submission for about two months. I accepted my offer in early July and I was permitted to announce in early September. The delay was due to on-going negotiations between my agent and publisher regarding some specific details in my contract.

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We had serious interest right away, and an official offer in just over a week. It pretty much blew my mind because I had expected a much longer wait! We did have to wait a couple months to announce the deal, however, and it was so difficult to keep my mouth shut. Especially when nice people would wish me luck on sub. (I felt rather bad about that, actually.) The reason for the wait was that my publisher is corporately inclined and there’s a lot of red tape and negotiations and such. They prefer to have the contract signed, sealed, and delivered before announcing.

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My book was on submission for about four weeks before the official offer came in. I was able to announce less than two weeks after saying yes to the final, revised offer, as soon as we had language for the announcements.

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I didn’t even know my manuscript had been sent out. I discovered I was on sub when my now editor followed me on Twitter! In the words of my agent, it was “kismetically perfect” and the first editor who read ended up being the editor who bought.

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I was on submission for three months, roughly. My agent gave me the okay right after we got off the phone after she’d talked to my editor and I was like THANK GOD I DON’T THINK I COULD HOLD IT IN AT ALL.

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