How I Got My Book Deal

Story time, yall! This post has been in the drafts for a year now.

After nearly 3 months of intense edits and revisions, LOVE MONSTERS (now titled THE POISONS WE DRINK) was ready to go on submission. All my knowledge about submission came from my agented friends, HOW I GOT MY BOOK DEAL author blog posts, Alexa Donne videos, and Mindy McGinnis’s Submission Hell It’s True (affectionately known as SHIT) blog. Mentally, I thought I was prepared for this next stage in the publishing process, but LMAO I wasn’t. It was late October and I was riding on the hope that publishing would make good on its promises and pledges to Black authors and our Black stories. *snort*

John, my agent, compiled a sub list. Because I participated in PitMad, I also had a list of editors who liked my pitch. So, we smashed our lists together.

This is the pitch the editors liked!

In the end, we had a 25-editor deep list of YA imprints and Adult imprints. My book is a YA Crossover, so my agent thought it best to sub to Adult imprints too. Then on Wednesday, October 28, 2020, we officially went on submission. Going on sub with a witch book on the week of Halloween and the 2nd full moon was a choice and a statement. Almost immediately, we got back lots of interest.

The next week, however, was the US presidential elections which was rather ironic because I wrote this story in response to the 2016 election outcome, LOL. Anyway, surprisingly enough we received editorial passes during those chaotic November weeks. The passes were nice, but with some though there was a repeated theme.

Sorry, but this is too adult/mature/old for my YA imprint.

This didn’t sit right with me, but I figured I was overreacting because it was a pass. Writers are always told to read our genre to understand the pulse and temperature of the market and our audiences. Black YA SFF is a shallow pool that’s slowly deepening 1 centimeter at a time. White YA SFF is an expansive sea of endlessness. I naively believed that if a white YA author wrote something then publishing gave a metaphorical signed permission slip for any author thereafter to do the same.

But I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Being an avid YA reader and an educator-reviewer, my knowledge of what’s OK in YA backfired on me. I learned that publishing gave leniency to white authors, allowing them to stretch YA’s parameters and redefine boundaries that marginalized authors cannot occupy.

We had a few close calls. Interested editors who took my book to second reads, but once again, second reads came back with the same “too adult/mature/old” passes. Not all passes I received were like this. I had other passes regarding worldbuilding, pacing issues, plot issues, and story choices. But by mid-December, these specific “too adult/mature/old” passes were a significant pattern I couldn’t ignore. I became so frustrated, I went to my agented friends and mutuals to vent.

I just couldn’t quite place WHY I was so frustrated about this.

Yes, my story is YA Crossover. Yes, we subbed to a mix of YA and Adult imprints in the event YA editors didn’t think it was their cup of tea, but no one could explain to me what made it too adult/mature/old in an industry where white SFF books have assassins, soldiers, vengeful princesses, mad kings, bloodthirsty generals, rebellions, revolutions, wars, violence, death, gore, profanity, teen drinking, drugs, sex, and more. What made a story about a Black 18-year-old witch struggling with PTSD, in war with her own sentient magic, and trying to protect her family in a hateful country too mature for a YA audience to handle?

I speak to a Black published author I have the utmost respect for about my confused feelings and she pinpointed the thing that had been bothering me for weeks. The thing I couldn’t describe or put into words which essentially made me doubt and question if my frustrations were valid at all. She told me that publishing loved adultifying Black teen characters. I had never heard of this word before even though I’ve been subjected to it myself in my childhood and adolescence. Adultify. Why? Because most Black people are adultified when they’re children. It’s no secret Black kids are seen and treated as adults in real life. Black kids are disciplined and punished more than their white counterparts. A fifteen-year-old Black child is called a man or a woman on national news and white adults are seen as innocent kids who didn’t know any better.

In an all-white industry, traditional publishing (knowingly or unknowingly) applied this same logic to Black teen MCs while receiving back-pats for their Black Voices Matter pledges. An all-white industry that used all-white editors, second reads, and acquisition teams to weigh each Black submission’s worth on how they appeal to a white audience. Authenticity didn’t matter. Marketability did.

But before you say “Befunie, trad pub is a business and marketable books will make them money because businesses have to make money,” publishers posted things like this all over Blue Ivy’s internet. Nowhere do I see white-appealing Black voices matter or white-appealing Black stories matter. Do you? Mm hm, thought so.

I spoke to more Black YA author-friends and they had similar stories about their characters being adultified. In the back of my mind, I wondered if maybe the choices behind these passes—and the choice of words—were due to a poor understanding of what the weight of those reasons and words meant to a Black author. Maybe.

So, I went to John about this. He agreed with me and we came up with a plan on how to address future passes that did this. He even made a tweet thread about adultifying Black teen characters.

As winter break neared, we had a few passes come in. Luckily, they were the usual ones. Worldbuilding is confusing. Pacing is choppy. La, la, la. After we tiptoed into the new year, we heard not a peep from editors. TBH, I was relieved and very much at peace with a quiet inbox. Yes, yes, rejection comes with the territory of wanting to be a traditionally published author. But when you’re a first-timer in the submission game, the passes chip away at your confidence as a writer especially if the editor liked your work but second reads (colleagues an editor goes to for a second opinion on a manuscript) or acquisitions (a meeting where trad pub professionals gather in numbers to do Usher footwork all over your dreams, probably) pulled one of these:

I call those passes The Nearlies because you were nearly done with the hoop-jumping but toward the end you realized the remaining hoops are 🔥fiery ones🔥. I’d been burnt once or twice. Trad pub’s silence gave me the time I needed to regain my confidence as a writer and reignite my love for writing. As someone with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, being on sub took a major toll on my mental health because this story meant a lot to me. At that point, POISONS and I had been together for 4 years.

It was my grief journal. I poured a lot of myself into it to survive some of the darkest periods of my life.

I decided it was time to try and move on.

So, I told John that I was ready to trunk the book. Before the holidays, an editor who passed on POISONS expressed interest in working with me on a different project. So, I decided to dust off an old passion project and work on a proposal. We set a deadline for March 1, 2021 and gave the remaining editors six weeks to read POISONS.

We had five passes trickle in over the weeks leading up and on the day of the deadline. Six editors were marked as no-responses.

But at that point, I really didn’t care about the passes or the no-responses. I was excited to work on a story that’d been on the backburner for five years. With the deadline done, POISONS could be laid to rest. Except the very next day on March 2, 2021, John got emails from two editors requesting extensions.

I was an absolute nervous wreck that day because HOPE IS A GODDAMN SLEDGEHAMMER AND IT WAS BEATING THE HELL OUTTA ME!

However, on March 3, 2021, one of the two editors passed.

I was absolutely devastated. We gave an extension past the deadline for another no. I was screaming, crying, and throwing up. And fainting. Where’s my smelling salts?

On March 4, 2021, John sent me an email titled TWO BOOK OFFER FROM SOURCEBOOKS. Our Round 1 sub list’s final editor took POISONS to acquisitions and everyone loved it. Sourcebooks wanted to buy my book + untitled book (which would’ve been the sequel, but that’s another story for another time, chile).

John and I hopped on the phone a few days later to talk about the proposed offer. We both felt good about the deal so I said yes with my whole chest. That same week, I spoke with the editor that wanted my book, Annie Berger. It was so bizarre hearing an editor say she and a publisher loved POISONS.

Six months later, we got to announce the good news.

Erm, ignore that winter 2022. It’s February 2024 now. It’s my fault.😩

Aight, yall! Until next time!

Some stats:

Submission Duration: 4 months, 4 days

Submission Rounds: 1

Editors Subbed: 25

Editor Passes: 18

Editor No-Responses: 6

Editors Subbed who liked my #PitMad pitch: 6

YA Editors Subbed: 22

Adult Editors Subbed: 3