Muted Colours: My Book Deal Journey
They told me it would be a long journey from writing, querying, and actually getting a book published, and they sure weren’t wrong!
I started the process of interviewing people for this book in February 2022, having started writing some of my own story before that. It took me a little over a year to finish writing, get feedback, and make enough revisions to start looking at getting it published in the summer of 2023.
And look at me now! My book, Muted Colours, is scheduled for publication in 2027 with Dundurn Press!
Look at these lovely official deal announcements!
Not going to lie, the publishing industry is not an easy thing to understand. In the spirit of sharing my experience to help other writers find their path to publication, I thought I would share how I got from finished manuscript to getting a book deal.
Long story short, I decided to go the traditional publishing route, not self-publishing. Having self-published my children’s book Hunter’s Special Squawk, I realized that marketing myself does not come easily to me. I’m an anxious introvert, so I am not comfortable with talking my book up constantly of my own volition.
To get traditionally published in Canada, you can try to get a literary agent, and/or submit your work to publishers directly (unagented) if they allow unagented submissions. I queried both agents and independent publishers and ended up getting the book deal without an agent (meaning that I queried Dundurn Press directly).
If you like DATA, then read on to see how many agents and publishers I queried and the timeframes for when I heard back (if I did!).
*note: My book is NONFICTION, which looks a little different from fiction and memoir. A book proposal is necessary for nonfiction queries, but not for fiction and memoir.
During the process of querying, I was also getting feedback and support from accessing my local library’s Writer in Residence, paying for a consultation with Manuscript Academy, getting a query feedback session through the Pitch Perfect program through the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), and getting as much information as possible about successful querying from resources like The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast, Jane Friedman, Eric Smith, and Courtney Maum.
You can see that response times vary for literary agents, if you get a response at all! I was celebrating when I got my first rejection response because it meant that someone actually looked at my query for long enough to write back!
Querying publishers was definitely NOT a linear process. I had some publishers suggest other publishers to try that they thought would be a better fit, which gave me hope that my book wasn’t outright garbage. I actually had significant interest from a small university press and was working on revisions for them when I got the YES email from Dundurn Press.
What are the takeaways?
Do your research on agents and publishers to see how your book will fit into their roster.
Get involved in literary spaces to meet people who might be a valuable network connection.
Don’t take rejection personally. It’s all about FIT, not about whether your work is good or deserves to be published.
