Is there a book submission arms race
And if so, I hates it preciousss
Hello and hope you all had a relaxing, book-filled long weekend. As Scotland is being incredibly dreich and ghastly this week, I have been getting back into Novella2 rather than doing any of the planned gardening. It’s lovely to be drafting again after months of editing, and also quite nice to be doing so under no external pressures as this novella is odd and ambitious, and I’m not sure what I plan to do with it if I even manage to pull it off.
Now. If you are one of my wonderful paying subscribers, you’ll have had forewarning of this post, as I mentioned it in the last Diary update. I wanted to talk about the opaque world of book submission (where agents send books to acquiring editors for consideration), and in particular, something I’m watching emerge from the current system overload. Namely, a wee arms race that some authors and their agents are quietly waging to try to jump their submissions up the mountainous queues.
(And in recognition of the size of editor inboxes, you’re getting mountain photos today - old slides from Patagonia because yes I am That Old and also I may as well use these photos for something dammit)
Before I get started, what’s going on with sub anyway?
So I’m hardly in a position to expound on editor workloads with any expertise, but I think it’s safe to say that since the global panini began, there’s been a step change in the numbers of submissions being received by both editors and agents, and a concurrent decline in response rates and responsiveness. Where you could once realistically expect to hear back on submissions within a handful of months, now to hear back at all in the first few months is exceptional, with most response times probably within the 6-12 month window. Where ghosting was a phenomenon exclusive to writers querying agents, now it’s common between editors and agents too.
Aside from the glut of aspiring writers after the panini, there are wider issues at work here. A ballooning of the agent population - the fabulous podcast Print Run mentions the unsustainability of current agent numbers fairly often, and ruminates over when & how painfully the bubble will burst. And also the constant squeezing and understaffing of editorial departments, publishers placing more project management duties onto editors, etc.
Whatever the causes, the fact remains that the process of selling a book to editors has, in most cases, slowed to a geological crawl.
So what are agents doing about it?
Good question! What can an agent do about it? Some strategies I’ve heard thrown around are:
send to the full list of potential editors in one go rather than split subs into batches & wait indefinitely for the first batch of responses.
do exclusive subs - sending to one particular (carefully chosen) editor for an exclusive period to try to prompt a quick read.
keep nudging long after you’d once have assumed a book was dead.
do more direct pitching before sub to try to drum up interest and get that book to the top of the pile.
try to build a reputation as a thoughtful agent - someone who isn’t just sending sub after sub after sub at an editor’s inbox but is instead curating submissions with care and patience, and whose submissions are therefore worth looking at.
….and increase the appeal of the submission by adding bells and whistles to catch the editor’s eye.
This last point is the one I wanted to talk about today.
What do I mean by bells and whistles? Well, it’s any extra material that might make a submission a bit more eye catching. It might be as simple as a moodboard, or as big as audio recordings of the first few chapters. I’ve seen character art, both commissioned and by the authors, character sheets, hollywood casting lists for the surely inevitable film adaptation, emails made to look like train tickets, or vintage invitations. Trope images as per every author’s social media feed, endorsements from other authors (who are normally friends of the author), spotify playlists and links to pinterest boards.
There are certainly other forms of extra material I’ve not encountered, but that some agent somewhere has added to their submission package in the hope an editor will go ‘huh, that looks fun, let’s pull it out from the depths of my inbox and read’.
This does all sound kinda fun, why am I calling it an arms race?
Because that’s what it is. Way back in the days of submission nirvana, when (this was true once, right?) all subs were responded to within a fortnight and no-one was ever ghosted ever at all, a submission package only needed to be an enticing pitch letter and a wonderful, polished manuscript.
Recently, as sub started getting slower, as agent numbers grew and editor numbers shrank and so each precious manuscript is fighting to be seen amidst increasing masses … some bright spark decided to add a moodboard. That book got read a little faster, maybe, or maybe it didn’t. It doesn’t actually matter whether the gambit worked, it only matters that rumours spread of this clever tactic to game the system. To get quicker reads, to jump the queue.
Hearing this rumour, a few more authors asked their agents about adding moodboards, or pretty graphics to their email, or whatever particular shiny carrot they chose. With that beginning to look a bit predictable and stale, another bright spark decided to do more (or their agent asked them). Commission some character art, or make up a playlist, or record themself reading the first few chapters. Again, it doesn’t really matter whether or not these shiny things are working in getting quick reads, it only matters that word of them is spreading.
So … I do think we’re in the early days of a minor arms race between agents trying to make their submission stand out from the masses. And with the baseline already shifting for how much extra shiny needs to be attached to a sub to achieve that goal.
Do the bells and whistles work?
Like I said, it doesn’t really matter whether they work, only that people talk about them. Besides I would be surprised if there’s a universal answer to that question - I imagine they work sometimes, with some editors and some books, and don’t work with others. In fact they might even get annoying, clogging up emails with graphics-heavy files, attachments, website links etc is only going to slow someone down, and might leave a distinctly negative impression.
I am almost certain they make zero difference to the chances of a book being acquired by an editor - the intention is only to jump to the top of the heaving inbox so poor authors aren’t languishing in the sub abyss for years. Which is a fair aim for an agent. Quicker reads, while they might not increase sale likelihood, will lead to potentially quicker sales, which leads to smoother career advancement for the authors (and their agents).
So why does this trend give me the ick?
First a confession. I am part of the problem - I recorded the audio of the opening chapters of Ghosts for US sub. I got the idea for providing audio from an episode of the Publishing Rodeo podcast where Daphne Tong - the owner of Illumicrate and Daphne Press - mentioned audio submissions being a much more accessible format for her hectic schedule. It struck me as a way to provide greater flexibility to my sub package, both for people with access needs, and just in recognition of editors’ strained workloads and limited reading time.
Further confession, although we got a few lovely comments back about enjoying the audio, Ghosts remains unsold in the US and was ghosted (lol) by several editors. So as a test of the tactic, my single experience would be pretty negative. I have however, seen other forms of enticement result in quick reads, so I stand by my gut feeling that it can both work and not.
Now… on to the salty opinion!
I find this trend uncomfortable because it accentuates the unevenness of the sub playing field, adding greater advantage to those already in positions of privilege and greater barriers to those already disadvantaged.
Much of the potential added material comes from the authors themselves, and requires either time to create, or money, or both. Marginalised creatives are less likely to have that free time or disposable income. They are also less likely to be ‘in’ on industry conversations to even know this is thing which might increase their chances of success.
People with time and financial leeway, however, or who are au fait with industry chatter, are much better positioned to produce a submission package that catches editor eyes and wins those coveted quick reads.
Publishing isn’t a meritocracy, we know this. And we know its inequality is embedded in the submission stage - societally centred authors will attract more interest and larger deals than marginalised authors whose stories are labelled (usually inaccurately) as ‘niche’. Therefore any changes to the submission landscape should, in my mind, strive to improve equity, not exacerbate bias.
Also, put simply, arms races are an act of futility. Constantly chasing the moving goalposts of New Shiny Submission Material will only result in more work for writers and agents, and more unwieldy inboxes for editors. While it might in the short term, benefit the odd individual author, the harm to us all as a whole surely outweighs that.
Do I have anything good to say?
Well, yes. For starters this pattern is only recent and neither universal nor particularly widespread. It’s probably more common in SFF, YA & Romance - the genres that tend to have more content-led marketing online and thus lend themselves to content-led submissions. (I suspect such online content is where much of this has bled across from, to be honest)
Also, while I think it’s a spreading phenomenon, I do think enough agents and editors find the whole thing questionable to stop it ever gaining dominance. Of course, it doesn’t need to gain widespread dominance to deepen equity problems within certain corners of sub-land.
Lastly, it is quite easy, as an author, to decide not to play the game.
…Well, actually that’s a lie. Going on sub is such a desperately uncertain thing, we tend to grasp at anything which might improve our chances, so the inclination to frantically create pretty gimmicks for our agent is strong.
However, we’re all adults. We can choose to step back from the gimmicks and trust our agent’s pitching abilities, trust our book’s wonderfulness, be patient, be more patient, eat our bodyweight in chocolate…
I am havering over this last point, if I’m honest. Because the game is rigged, so we should use any tools at our disposal to increase our chances of success. Especially if we’re marginalised along axes historically disfavoured by publishing. While D-list celebrities get deals handed to them, why the hell not make some pretty moodboards to make your sub just that bit more enticing? Each man for himself etc.
Only I don’t agree that it’s each man for himself. I think writers are a community and need, sometimes, to act like one if we’re going to protect ourselves. The person you push down the queue by jumping ahead is not the D-list celebrity, after all, it’s probably someone more marginalised than you.
So what am I going to do?
I’m an author marginalised along several axes, struggling to be seen amidst authors who are more privileged and more willing to throw shiny things at editors. Do I walk away from the arms race, or do I try to play?
While it’s an incredibly time- and energy-expensive thing to do, I am most inclined to record audio again, if my agent thinks it’s remotely worth it. Primarily because I can see it as an accessibility aid, rather than a gimmick. The rest though? After some indecision, I think I’ll leave my agent to hype up my books for me, and trust that the right editor will be lured in by the concept then fall in love with the story.
I don’t want to play a losing game, and I’d love it if no-one else did either.
Thank you for your support and I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences of submission tactics. Next time on the blog, I might (if I’m feeling brave enough) talk about publicity, politics and platforms - the unhappy balancing act of being an author online while the world burns.
