Going Out on Sub
or how a writer gets a book deal (hopefully)
It’s a phrase that elicits kind of an excited trepidation in writers, and total confusion in others. I’ll break it down here for those who like to learn more about publication stages and rites of passage. For the rest of you, feel free to scroll down to the actual point of this post.
“Going out on sub” is short for “going out on submission”. Why we erase ‘mission’ from the sentence, I have no ever-loving idea. Maybe because it sounds less serious and we’re all a little terrified of the seemingly arbitrary and subjective process. Most often we just say we’re “on sub”, like a whispered afterthought. If you say it too loudly, you might scare it!
But let me back up. First you need a finished manuscript. It needs to be as free and clean of errors as humanly possible, but it also needs to be a good story. It might seem like that’s an obvious hallmark, but you’d be surprised what I’ve seen on both the literary agent’s side as an intern, and the editor side now. I believe most people genuinely think they have a good story, but it’s clear who’s done the work to study the craft and who has never read a children’s book in their life. Don’t be the latter.
Once you have a shiny polished draft you either want an agent to do the work of finding an editor at a publishing house, or you can send it directly yourself to editors at some publishing houses. The tricky part is the big publishing houses—like Random House or Macmillan, which probably everyone has heard of—will only take manuscripts pitched by agents. So if you have it in your heart of hearts that you want your book to be published by one of the big guys, you must pitch to an agent first. And this is another round of research and following the rules of securing an agent first, which can take some considerable time. That is the route I chose, however, and so I’ve had an agent since 2015.
When your agent, or you, thinks the draft is ready it is then pitched to editors at all of the chosen publishing houses and imprints (an imprint is a smaller, focused publishing group under the main house umbrella) you think it fits. If you have an agent, they figure this out for you, but if you’re going to do it yourself - more research. The last thing you want to do is pitch your picture book to an editor who only works with adult romance novels. Either way this is the “going on submission” process—when the manuscript gets shopped around in the hopes that one editor will love it and want to buy it (that’s your advance) to get it published.
It’s invigorating and can make you feel a bit vulnerable when you get your submission list—the names of all the editors the manuscript has been pitched to. Even after doing it several times—each new project, each new list—feels a bit precarious. If you’re fortunate to secure an editor for your career, then you don’t have to go through this process over and over, in theory. But many of us get orphaned—meaning an imprint closes or an editor moves on to another position or job altogether—and then you have to start the process all over again. Or if you decide you want to write in a brand new category—like memoir—you likely will have to start the process over again, and as in the case of me writing an adult book, I’ll also have to find a second agent who represents memoir.
So that’s where I am at. I’m on sub with a children’s book for the first time in over two years. I haven’t had a publishing contract since 2020 and the last two novels we tried to sell weren’t picked up. (One of which was Monolith, which many of you followed the journey as I self-published it instead) And the publishing world has changed drastically—some positive ways, some perplexing—so I kind of feel like that little baby writer all over again. Someone pick me!
I mentioned a while ago that I was starting to feel like I was done writing for kids, and it is true I haven’t written anything new, exactly, but pulled out an old project that was one of those ideas that cling to you when they pop out of the drawer every now and then. It’s the picture book I decided to re-write as a poem and the challenge was exactly what I needed. After feedback from many writing friends, and lots of revising, my agent and I felt it was ready to go, so on sub she went!
I know someone will say “aren’t you so excited?” and I am, but I’m also very accustomed to rejection so I’ll save the excitement for bigger and better news. I’m proud though, of not giving up on this book I started in 2018. I wrote and revised at least three entirely different formats/versions of over the years because I couldn’t decide how to tell the story. Like trying on a dozen outfits before a first date.
Maybe this is finally the right look?
For those who stuck around, (or scrolled down) a sneak peek of the inspiration of this project:
