24/12/2020 - So, What Next?

In the new year, my mentor is going to check the changes we worked out together for my book. She’s going to check my submission materials - my agent letter and my synopsis. We’re going to work together to pull a list of agents together to submit to. I’m going to submit to those agents and they’re universally going to reject the manuscript. If I get exceptionally lucky, maybe one will ask to read the full thing. My mentor may have a backup list of agents to send the thing to, but they will reject the manuscript as well.

I don’t want this to sound like a game of PLOM (Poor Little Old Me), as I’ve talked about previously, this is just about numbers. A reader for the agency Conville & Walsh wrote a piece explaining that they recieve 200 manucripts a month and, from those, an agent will maybe take on 4 writers per year. That’s 4 manuscripts out of 2,400. To put in percentage terms, Conville & Walsh pick up 0.16666666666666669%. of the writers who submit to them. Now, as previously discussed, the odds of getting picked up aren’t actually that bad, because plenty of those 200 manuscripts per month will be very bad, but getting picked up is still phenominally unlikely.

So, with that in mind, what will I do with the book once it gets rejected by everyone?

Well, I could self publish the thing. I’ve done this before, with my celebrated* novel Drown the Witch. The thing about self publishing is it’s basically a way of taking a large pile of money and then getting rid of it as quickly as possible. At the bare minimum you’ll want a cover (decent cover artists are extremely expensive), and you should probably get the thing proof-read as well. If you want an audiobook you can say goodbye to £2,000. All that’s before you spend any money promoting the thing.

I learned a lot from self-publishing Drown the Witch but I’m in two minds about trying again unless my mentor and I decide it’s the right way to go. That leaves me with limited options. Unless some sort of inspiration strikes, I’ll probably wind up sitting on the thing, like I did with the last book that got rejected. Drown the Witch, this current book and the last one are all set in the same universe, with minor connections, so my hope is, if one gets picked up, I can say ‘heeey, you like that book? Well I also have these set in the same world. You want them?’. This may be overly optimistic.

So, to cut a long story short: what happens with the next book gets rejected by everyone? Crying. Probably lots of crying. It’s going to hurt. Once I’m done crying, I’ll hopefully be able to carry on writing the book I’m working on now. Maybe that one will see more success.

*Most people who have read it enjoyed the thing - it’s got pretty solid reviews on Audible and Gooddreads, but I’ve made maybe £200 from the thing since its release in 2018. So it may be cellebrated but it’s not commercially succesful.