As a writer pitching your novel—or any other kind of work—your job is to be read. That’s the only job, and you have to get on it. A tough truth, told to a fellow alum, by BookEnds co-director Susie Merrell. But the most important words of encouragement—among so many—that she gifted to me, were in regard to the finished draft of my novel, Provenance. Play all sides of the street, Susie said at the end of my fellowship year, meaning query agents, submit to contests, and to independent presses.
I knew my literary novel would be hard to place in the current marketplace, so I took those words to heart. In fact, I promised, and there were plenty of days in which that commitment was the only thing that kept me querying and submitting. My Submittable queue and other tracking lists grew long. Provenance is my first novel, but I’m also a writer of short stories and flash nonfiction, and I was used to sending pieces out to ten or more places at a time, aiming for 100 rejections a year. (Yes—rejections, which means, in any given year, submitting much more.)
Writing a good query letter and synopsis—not to mention researching agents—often felt harder than writing the dang book. And, I’ll admit, I had little faith that I would ever get an agent’s request. But I’d promised to try, so I honed my query and in September 2020, I started sending out five queries a week, while still entering contests and submitting to independent presses. I also continued to write and submit shorter work. When my first request for the full manuscript came in, I was stunned. Then a flurry of others followed, and I decided to hold back on submitting to small presses. Contests seemed like such a long shot to me, that I kept entering those as I heard about them.
Over the next six months, many agents passed on my query and many more never responded at all. But I continued to get requests. Half those requesting agents passed. At the half-year point in March, I’d queried 176 agents. My plan was to wait three months, after which I would consider any queries I hadn’t heard back on as “ghosted.” Then I would start submitting to university and independent presses.
In early April, I got a congratulatory email saying that Provenance was one of fifteen novels longlisted for Madville Publishing’s Blue Moon Novel Contest. Several writer friends urged me to “nudge” the agents that still had my full. I only ever hoped to be listed or placed in a contest to boost my bio or for just this kind of leverage. But I wanted to wait, because it was already clear to me that if, by some chance, I won, I would accept the prize—which included publication.
And to my great shock, that’s exactly what happened. Provenance is slated to be published by Madville Press in the fall of 2022. For me, a very happy ending. It’s a long game—writing and trying to publish a literary novel. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
Resources:
Two invaluable sources of information on the how-to of getting a book deal, both these amazing women offer additional (paid) services beyond the free listings here:
- Kathy Ver Eecke I owe the success of my query to Kathy’s keen advice! Check out her free webinar with 20 great insider tips on landing an agent
- Jane Friedman More advice on writing effective queries and the dreaded synopsis
- For researching agents and tracking your submissions:
- For researching Independent Presses:
Entropy Magazine Where to Submit
- Literistic for contests and other submission opportunities
- And, of course, Poets & Writers (Agent Q & A’s, contests and other submission opportunities, small press database, and a hundred other things!)
Sue Mell was a BookEnds fellow in 2019-2020 and holds an MFA from The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her winning novel, Provenance, is slated for publication by Madville Press in the fall of 2022, and her collection of micro essays, Giving Care, was a semi-finalist for the 2020 Digging Press Chapbook Prize. Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Cleaver Magazine, Digging Through The Fat, Jellyfish Review, Narrative Magazine, Newtown Literary, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Whale Road Review.