I Got a Publishing Deal! Here's How. (Part Two.)

The dramatic conclusion!

Welcome back!

Last week, I shared a bit of my publishing journey. (If this is the first post of mine you’re reading, I’ll catch you up to speed: my book is coming out next year!) In last week’s post, I shared the not-so-fun part of querying and publishing. The first-100-rejections part. You probably already know that this journey ends (or begins!) with a book deal, so let’s just jump back into it and get to how I got here.

December 2023

Querying The Barefoot Followers of Sweet Potato Grace officially began at the Writing Workshop of Chicago, where I read my query to three agents and my first page to five agents. I had to pay extra to read to the first three agents, but I’m glad I did. Their genuine enthusiasm reassured me that my query was appealing. The five agents who read my first page gave me feedback that I used to polish up my first chapter and prepare it for 2024. 

Also December 2023

My first query rejection arrived in my inbox before the year’s end: “…while there is much to admire here and your voice is so funny, I'm having to be very selective about the projects I take on, and it isn't quite the right fit for my list at this time. I've really struggled to sell projects that lean heavily on humor and satire, and while I love those elements as a reader, as an agent, I'm not confident I could place this combination of humor and speculative.”

First and foremost, my goal with this book was to write a funny, warm story about identity, grief, and family. Despite this initial rejection, I knew I had achieved my larger goal. 

Throughout 2024, I queried just over 50 agents and received two partial requests. The first time I queried, I queried over 100 agents and received two full requests and one partial request.

These are not the results you want when you’re looking for an agent. 

I still knew I had something special with this book. And I read stories about how Emily Henry queried multiple books before landing a deal, and I heard encouragement from my Dad who told me that even if I queried seven books before I got a deal, I would still get a deal. I forged on.

February 2024

Before I knew it, I was on a plane to Kansas City. As I learned through social media, I wasn’t the only writer who flew to Kansas City with the hopes that I was on the right path. But I came to the AWP conference with two specific strategies:

1. Meet authors and ask about their journeys.

AWP offered upwards of a hundred panels and more readings over the course of three days. If I wanted to be a guest on a panel, promoting a book one day, I would have to find out how other authors got there. And because I was querying my book as an LGBTQ book club fiction, I really wanted to hear from LGBTQ authors who navigated the publishing industry in the midst of book bans and other silly things.

I found that publishing with independent presses had more advantages than I had previously thought. Authors like Julian Winters and Jeffrey Dale Lofton spoke about independent presses and how that path supported their novels and careers. Panels on distribution and marketing set expectations on how much publicity support small presses could provide. The more I heard from people, the more I felt comfortable sharing my manuscript with small and independent presses. It would have been nice if an agent swept me off my feet, took me through a round of edits, and put me on submission only to land a great deal with a Big Five. Admittedly, as the first rejections were rolling in from agents, I had a feeling that wasn’t my path.

2. Meet editors at small and independent presses.

Throughout the conference, I walked through the AWP bookstore, looking at books produced by small presses. If I liked the covers and found myself wanting to buy one of the books, I stopped and talked to whoever was running the booth. I asked a handful of typical and not-so-typical questions.

• Do you publish fiction? If so, what genres?

• Do you accept unagented submissions?

• If I’m looking to buy a silly book, what book would you recommend?

Not every publisher accepted fiction submissions or unagented submissions. And when I asked some folks about silly books, some gave me a strange look. I knew they weren’t a good fit. TBFOSPG is silly and fun. I needed an editor who was going to embrace that.

That’s how I met the team at Lanternfish Press. Their covers are phenomenal. They’re based in Philadelphia, my “home city.” (I grew up in Bucks County, so I’m not technically ‘“from” Philly. We bonded over that.) Most importantly, Lanternfish advertised their books as “rare and strange”. Lanternfish publishes stories that don’t fit one specific genre. And most of their books have some elements of speculative fiction, like time travel! When I asked for a silly book, they enthusiastically gave me two options to choose from.

I walked away from their booth feeling electric. Lanternfish’s submissions opened in March, and I knew I had to share my manuscript with them.

March 2024

Should you query agents and send your manuscripts to small presses at the same time? It’s not recommended, but I did it anyway. I was not getting the results I had hoped for from agents, and the handful of small presses I wanted to submit to only had a month-long window for unagented submissions.

As I waited for Lanternfish’s open submission period, I queried agents here and there as they became available or as an agent from the same agency rejected my query. But I really slowed things down. I told myself that if all the independent presses I queried that spring rejected the manuscript, I would do a huge revision in the fall and try again the next year. In the meantime, I focused on new projects.

Overall, I submitted my manuscript to five small presses. I also started taking courses to earn a copyediting certificate and training for a half-marathon. I needed some distractions as I waited for responses.

May 2024

I was waiting for a friend at Cosmic when I checked my email and saw that Lanternfish was interested in having “the call.”

THE CALL!

Lanternfish was interested in acquiring my manuscript.

In the two weeks between “the call” and sealing the deal, I reached out to an agent who had a partial and the small presses who had my full manuscripts. It’s a courtesy to let them know that you have a deal. More rejections came in! But that’s okay. Something in my gut told me back in February that I would end up signing with Lanternfish, and my gut was right.

August 2025

The Barefoot Followers of Sweet Potato Grace will hit bookstores next year. In the meantime, I have a lot of work to do: one more round of edits, weighing in on cover art, reaching out to writers who want to read or review the book, doing a few good-review dances, deleting Goodreads from my phone, preparing for a book tour and a launch event and conferences…a lot of work. But this doesn’t feel like work yet, because it’s to bolster the success of a dream that I’ve had for a very long time.

I hope this post was informative, or at least fun to read. While I feel like a baby giraffe walking on skinny legs for the first time, navigating the rocky ground below me, at least I’m enjoying the sunshine. And I hope I can share that sunshine with writers who are still in the dark in terms of querying, being on submission, or finishing their novel. Know that you can always DM me for questions, and I will try to be transparent when I can about writing, ghostwriting, and entering this industry.

I hope to see you at a book event, book festival, One Page Salon, or other literary event soon!