Agents' Submission Strategy
Why you should ask about this on the offer call, What it means, and Why it matters to you
There are a million resources out there listing questions that you should ask an agent when they offer to represent you.
Those lists include things like, What’s your preferred communication style? and What happens if we can’t sell my first book? Or, What happens to your clients if you move agencies? All very good questions to ask, btw. One question that is frequently on those lists—and should definitely be on yours—is “What is your submission strategy?”—and specifically, “What would your submission strategy be for my book?”
Oh, dear me. So, funny story—I asked this question to both the agents who offered to represent me many years ago. At the time, I barely knew what the phrase “on sub” meant haha. So it stands to reason that their answers barely meant a thing to me, either. I think they each spouted off a few imprint names, maybe an editor name, and I was like, “oh okay cool I guess you know what you’re doing.”
And my point here isn’t that they didn’t know—I’m still happily signed with my original agent—only that I didn’t know what to listen for. And if that’s the case for you as well, I’d love to shed some light on what the agent’s answer means in real life!
So, thesis statement for today’s newsletter: I am here to tell you how about the three main submission strategies that are out there, so that you can pinpoint which camp the offering agent is in, as well as understand what it might mean for you long term. Spoiler alert: it makes a difference!
First, I should clarify that all the submission strategies I’ve seen or heard about involve rounds.
What is a round?
It’s a batch of editors who are all sent the submission on the same day (or roughly the same small time period). Normally, after a certain amount of time has passed, perhaps 3-4 months—or when the majority of those editors have responded—if there are no takers, it’s usually time for a second round. The editor pool is not unlimited—and you can only submit to any given imprint once, no exceptions—so at some point, presumably, the project may eventually have gone out to all viable editors, at which point, the phrase ‘died on sub’ is frequently bandied about.
Maybe this feels basic, but … Why rounds?
Why Rounds?
A couple reasons (and we’ll get into more further down):
Publishing houses have rules. For example, HarperCollins (as far as I know) prefers that agents only sub a project to 3 imprints at a time. Therefore, I can’t necessarily send a book to everyone I think might be a fit at HC in the first round. However, once an editor rejects, it opens up that ‘slot’ for another. Or, another example: Sourcebooks wants a single editor to consider a project. However, if an editor for one imprint turns it down, they are open to me sending it to a different editor at a different imprint (never the same imprint, though! That rule is inalterable).
Not all publishing houses are equally desirable. Sorry to say it—but I also don’t think this should be a shock to anyone? Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to include all the publishing houses up front in round #1.
Let’s be honest: there are a lot of houses and imprints out there. And not all of them might be the agent’s or the author’s first choice for a project. However, if the project doesn’t get picked up by the top choices, they might be perfectly acceptable as a second or third round choice, since the alternative might be a shelved book that never sees the light of day. I really hope this doesn’t sound rude! And I want to clarify, this isn’t about size. There are a lot of smaller pub houses out there doing great things, and I’m in no way saying they are not desirable. There are other factors such as distribution, how they’ve done with other titles, what marketing support they offer, what deal terms they offer, authors’ good or bad experiences with the editorial team or even a certain editor that they may have shared privately or publicly and may have come to the agent or author’s attention, etc.
Okay! So we’ve established that there are pretty much always rounds.
Put simply, there are three main strategies (we’ll get into other strategic elements further down, but we’ll start with the three main camps): Go Wide, Go Medium, or Go Small.
The mindset is actually quite similar to querying, and I think those of you who are in or have been in the query trenches will see the correlation right away.
GO SMALL
With this submission strategy, your agent sends your book out smaller group of editors. That way, if there’s common feedback in the rejections, the author has the chance to revise without having burned through the majority of the editors up front.
Then, the second round of editors would have the chance of receiving a revised/improved version, again possibly to a smaller group of editors, and so on.
For clarity, I’d probably call any round that involves 9 or less editors a “small” round. I’d consider 10-18 editors a medium round, and 19+ editors a wide round. (These are my personal numbers—so make a note that it’s worth asking your offering agent exactly how many editors are involved in what they consider a ‘small’ round—it could likely differ since This Is Not Science.)
During my internship days, one of the agents I worked with used this “Go Small” strategy. She went out to about 6 editors at a time for any given project. Once all the responses had come in from those editors, she would reevaluate with her client to decide if a revision was warranted before the manuscript went out to the next 6 editors. And so forth.
GO MEDIUM
My (uneducated) guess is that this might be the most common agent strategy. Other agents, please correct me in the comment section if you have heard differently!
Like going small, this ensures you don’t “burn” through all editors up front, but it also improves the time efficiency of the process, since editors can take a very, very long time to read and respond (and that’s if they don’t ghost—yes, these are the realities of the state of the industry).
GO WIDE
This submission strategy is built around the idea that creating competition gives a book its best chance.
It’s not rocket science: after getting the manuscript into its best shape possible, during Round #1, your agent goes out to a large list of editors. I won’t make any secret of it—this is my preferred strategy for most projects. For most of my clients, that’s between 20 and 30 editors—a mix of Big 5 and large indies (Sourcebooks, Kensington, Scholastic, Bloomsbury, etc.), as well as reputable smaller houses (Peachtree Teen, Entangled, Zando, etc).
Going wide can mean that you “burn through” all your most ‘desirable’ options more quickly. Second or third rounds will necessarily be smaller than they would in the other sub strategies. And, if there is some fundamental flaw in the book that the agent and author weren’t aware of, this would take away the chance for the author to ‘fix’ it before sending out to the best/most desirable editors.
Disclaimer time…
These are not the only strategies, of course. Sometimes it might make sense to do an exclusive submission. Or, if an option clause is at play (i.e. the author’s current book contract spells out that they have to sub their next work to their current publisher and give them the first shot at it) then strategy goes out the window and you just have to follow the rules. Things also change once someone is published and has a preexisting relationship with an editor and imprint.
Maybe for a certain book it makes sense to go for Audio first. I’ve heard of books that sell translation rights before selling to the US (yep).
And I’m sure there are more scenarios I haven’t thought of, or don’t know about yet.
(How about this? When I find out what they are, I’ll tell ya!)
Thus ends my disclaimer.
THE PROBLEM WITH GOING SMALL
Okay, I may be biased, since this is not my normal strategy, but for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts on the potential downsides of this strategy:
Time. Picking this up again—do you know how long it takes editors to read a manuscript??? Do you know!?!?!?
Okay, *calming down*. So—context—I’ve gotten rejections on manuscripts after a whole year has passed. YES. One year. This is how busy/overworked editors are. So sending it out to (for example) 6 editors is signing up the book for a potentially very long process. If it takes, say, 4-5 months for most of those editors to read and reject (which is entirely normal), nearly half a year has gone by—and the book has only been seen by half a dozen people. If another 6 editors get the book in round #2, you’re looking at the possibility of approaching 9 months to a year of being on sub… and your book has only been seen by 12 people. At least 3 of which will statistically ghost your agent, by the way.
Lessens the possibility of competition. Let’s say there’s good news in round #1, and one of the six editors falls in love with the book. YAY! At that point, unless they’re offering a pre-empt, your agent would notify the other 5 editors that there’s an offer on the table, and ask if they still have interest. Going to auction (when multiple editors are competing for the same book) is one of the best-case scenarios for an author. First, it gives them CHOICE. Second, it drives up the advance money, which in turn tends to drive up the investment the publisher has in marketing that book and making it a ‘success’ (i.e. getting the return on their investment). Advance money is fab. Publisher investment… it’s even more fab, and gives the book its best chance of making money beyond that initial advance payout.
Any time there’s an auction, at least someone bows out because they’re taking time off, or getting married, or… you name it. The time crunch of having to read quickly isn’t feasible for every single editor at any given moment. So now, in our scenario, let’s say someone backs out because of that kind of reason—now we’re down to 4 editors. And, just like with querying, the chances of someone else in those 4 falling in love is simply statistically slim. At least, much slimmer than a pool of, say, 20 other editors. You feel me?
Lack of actionable feedback. Part of the ‘going small’ strategy is based on the belief that if there is a flaw in the book that everyone notices, they will say something about it, thus giving you the tools to revise. However, the reality is that most editor rejections I receive do not have actionable feedback. Many are simply, “Sorry, this is a pass from me, but thanks!” or my personal favorite, “There was a lot to enjoy here, but I don’t see how I could break this out in a big way in today’s market, so I’m going to step aside with regrets.” (I’ve seen all the variations on that one!) So even if there is a fundamental flaw in the book you and your agent didn’t notice, and that you’re hoping the editors will catch for you, the likelihood of editors reading far enough to get to that flaw, and taking the trouble to spell it out… it may not be high.
Okay, lest you all think I’m a total “go small” hater, I would go small if there was something inherently risky about a book, and I wanted to test the waters with a small pool of editors who had a good track record of responding to me. It’s hard for me to imagine what this ‘risky’ scenario might be specifically, since I haven’t signed any books (yet) that I felt were risky. But I want to say loud and clear that I am not tossing out this strategy, or saying I’d never use it—I am saying that it would be more of a rare case for me. I’m personally not willing to drag things out that long on the hope of a feedback consensus from editors who barely have time to confirm receipt of a submission, much less put together detailed notes.
You know the ‘time is money’ thing? Yeah. To live off this job (whether it’s authoring or agenting), we have to sell books. So if there’s an option to make that process faster and more efficient? That’s the option I gravitate to.
My other disclaimer is—I’m a baby agent. (Hi!) So if you’re an agent, and you’re reading this, and you’re absolutely furious with this newsletter because you always go small and there are great reasons for you to do that that I didn’t think of, HI. And sorry. The whole point is, I want authors to be able to understand what these strategies might look like, and have the tools and imagined future scenarios so that they can ask you about it.
So don’t discount the agent who does small rounds (or medium rounds, or wide rounds)! That is not the intent behind all this. Instead, ask them questions.
Why do you want to go small? Is that your strategy with all books, or mine for a particular reason?
Do you feel my book is a bit riskier?
In your experience, do you get actionable feedback from editors?
Have you sold a book in a second round after revising? (in other words, has this strategy had good results for you and your clients?)
etc. etc.
THE PROBLEM WITH GOING BIG
Well, there’s bias here too, since this is my preferred strategy, heh heh. However, I’ll say (again) it can go through the most exciting options faster. But I don’t know if I see that as a negative—those same editors might have passed anyway had they received it months later.
The biggest problem is that, if fifteen editors all say “I hated the plot point where the dog is the murderer,” and the author thinks to themselves, “oh dang well I could change the murderer to the cat!”, it’s too late to send it back to those editors.
HOWEVER—as I pointed out earlier, I rarely see cohesive feedback across a title, and it’s rarely spelled out in so much detail that one could base a revision on it. Not to mention, I don’t think that anything that’s a ‘quick fix’ is the true reason for a rejection. Think about it—editors always have revision notes for authors. There are always changes they want after buying a book. If they love the book, they are willing to work on that. Usually, what holds them back is some deeper lack of connection that might be harder to address.
If this is your potential agent’s strategy, here are some questions you might ask!
How many editors are we talking about when you say “going wide”?
Have you sold books at auction using this strategy?
Do you include small houses in round #1? What’s the balance between Big 5 and independent houses?
Are there enough editors left for another round if the whole first round says “no”?
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Within the main categories of going small, medium or big, of course there are other countless variations on how an agent can approach the rounds.
Timing of the rounds - how many months does each round last? I’d say 3-4 is typical. But it’s worth asking your offering agent!
Sometimes, after going out initially (and especially if the round is a big one), agents might not do second-third-fourth rounds, but instead sent subs out on a kind of rolling basis, as they find new editors.
Timing of follow ups - this also varies. I know agents who follow up after a month. Some who wait until 5 months. I usually follow up at 1 month with anyone who hasn’t confirmed receipt and just say “Just want to make sure this email came through!” I’ve gotten probably half a dozen editors over the summer alone who said, “Oh gosh, thanks for emailing, because this did not make it into my queue!” You should ask: how often does your agent plan on nudging?
Transparency of both sub and follow ups - Okay, this point is a small deviation from strategy—but don’t forget to ask how you will know what’s going on. It’s all well and nice when an agent lays out their strategy. But, to state the obvious, actions speak louder than words. How will there be transparency so that you can see what they’re doing in real life with your book?
When is a project ‘done’? - This is worth asking! Some agents, after round #1 has died down, effectively give up on a project. I don’t believe this is best practice—or that anyone would admit to it up front—but it’s a reality out there. I would 100% ask your offering agent at what point they would stop actively subbing a project!
In Conclusion
The purpose of this post isn’t to convince you that one strategy is better than another. Lots of stellar agents are out there using lots of different strategies successfully. It all depends on what they’re prioritizing: time? Competition? Feedback?
Instead, my purpose is to arm you with enough information about what each strategy might look like so that, when an agent offers to represent you (or when you’re talking to your current agent about strategy on your next book!), you have some concept of the pros and cons associated with each strategy and can ask the appropriate questions!
Hope this was helpful for someone out there.
In the meantime, take care of yourselves and I hope your Tuesdays all rock!
Very helpful, thank you!
Perfect timing for a post like this!! So eye opening! When I got my agent call I was so freaked out and nervous I had no idea what to ask - or even if I did, my brain just wouldn't work! I'm lucky my agent knew all the best questions I SHOULD be asking and just answered them for me! :)