My Publishing Journey So Far...

It is a strange experience. For years, you’ve been querying, battling rejections, commiserating with critique partners or beta readers, agonising over long response times in Discord servers, and wiling the hours away dreaming of the day you get The Call or a full request, just some indication from someone in publishing that you are doing something right. And then, out of nowhere, everything just lands on your lap in an instant. You have The Call and sign with an agent that afternoon, and then you sign your book deal. You are embattled with more questions: do I get a Bookseller spread? Will the Publishers Marketplace announcement come this week or next? Should I free up space in my diary for interviews, editorial meetings—like, how do editors work anyway? And most importantly: can I tweet about this? 

I’ve had different versions of this in my drafts for a little while but I thought it was worth sharing my experience as a soon to be published author. The conversation around the debut experience has been pretty hopeless so far. Sometimes I’m glad I’m no longer blissfully ignorant, but between listening to the very candid stories on the Publishing Rodeo Podcast, reading articles about the dire debut experience (especially for Black writers), and simply seeing the tweets of disappointed and disgruntled new writers, it paints a demoralising picture and truly makes me question whether THE REAPER will be a total flop - not because of poor content, but lacklustre support. I’m still a bit early in my journey so we won’t know until the marketing happens, however as shown from my experience at the Del Rey summer party, things are looking good so far. 

My introduction to Del Rey was through Penguin WriteNow, a fantastic programme, but not without its hiccoughs. Regardless, my editor/mentor on the programme got me my book deal and I was thrilled to work with someone who was just so passionate about my work. Sadly, he left a month before I signed my contract. This is very common in the industry. A well-known phrase is “editors are overworked and underpaid” and regular reshuffles happen constantly. It means a large proportion of debut novelists become “book orphans” after the departure of their main champion. At the time, I didn’t know that editor reshuffles were typical in the industry, and I was very worried.  

As it is so common, being a book orphan isn’t so frightening for the publishing house, however some authors severely suffer when it happens to them. For me, my new editor Sam had an in-person lunch with me to introduce themselves and find out more about my writing process and the inspiration behind the series. Looking back, I appreciate her doing this, as I've since met other debut authors who were left for months, sometimes even over a year, without any contact from their editorial team - or if they did have contact, it was negative or unproductive because the new editor had a totally different vision from the first, at times steering the novel into a direction that the author didn't like. This is something you might need to be mindful of during your own journey. If it does happen to you, ensure you check in with your agent and raise your concerns, as it’s their job to make sure you’re being looked after. 

For the next few months leading up to signing the contract in October 2022 and getting my first proper editorial contact in Jan/Feb 2023, things were very quiet and my anxiety returned. However, things soon moved swiftly again after a much needed prompt from my agent. 

In mid 2023, I found out the book was getting pushed back to 2025, a year after my expected release date. I was of course disappointed. I emailed Molly to raise my concerns. I’m a newbie to this industry, I don’t know what is typical, what I should expect, and as a Black author there’s always a voice in the back of my head that makes me doubt myself. I think second-guessing yourself is a common experience among Black authors - we keep getting told that our stories don’t sell well, or that we’ve only been signed because of diversity quotas. We’re paranoid about being seen as difficult and ungrateful. It’s hard to know whether such things as publication delays are just par for the course or because of something deeper. It’s now 2024 and I’ve spoken to quite a few authors: pushbacks, reschedules, and delays are common. This is an unpredictable industry! So once again, if this happens to you, don’t worry straight away, check in with your agent and have them confirm the reasons behind the delay. 

Thanks to Molly, I quickly learnt the reasoning. Turns out, Del Rey had a lot of big names being published in 2024 and they didn’t want my marketing to be reduced or swallowed by the more established authors - it was their intention to make me their lead debut for my publishing year. Now at the time of writing this, my publicity campaign is still pending, but the summer party was my unofficial ‘launch’. Some of the things they’ve mentioned so far include podcast interviews, a Bookseller notification, and different ways to incorporate London into my campaign, seeing as though THE REAPER is set in this city. I’ll explain more about this as the campaign goes on, and hopefully everyone’s efforts will produce good fruit! 

Despite my initial scepticism about Del Rey’s 2024 schedule, it is clear that this year was stacked. Some of the books they published this year includes China Miéville and Keanu Reeves’ The Book of Elsewhere, Danielle L Jensen’s A Fate Inked In Blood (which included a snazzy Illumicrate deal), Ava Reid’s Lady Macbeth, and in October we’ll get Best Hex Ever by fellow debut Nadia El-Fassi. I do genuinely believe I would have got pushed to the side as an unknown, debut author, if they had squashed me into 2024.  

Now that I’m nearing the proof stage of THE REAPER, there’s not much to do. I have some small edits to return to my editorial director at the start of September, and there’s another author party I’m attending later next month. I plan to return to REAPER 2, which I haven’t touched in a while, and I’m slowly gearing up to taking some publicity ideas into my own hands. This site, and the newsletter, are part of that. And now that the pre-order links are available, I’ve been publicising them to my twitter followers. I also contacted a Goodreads librarian to get THE REAPER set up on there, and people are already adding the book to their lists!  

I would say my experience has been 80% positive so far, just taking into account those bumps in the road previously mentioned (which includes my WriteNow troubles). As this process is still ongoing, I only see it getting better over time. What I’ve learnt so far is that having a communicative and supportive team around you makes all the difference. There are some bad agents out there that don’t support their clients unless they’re one of the big name money-makers, basically abandoning them to shoulder the burdens of publication alone. There are other publishing houses that focus their attentions onto the books they believe will sell, and not even attempt to work collaboratively with all their authors. Some publishing houses are also extremely racist: they ignore the concerns of the Black/BAME authors, only using them to create an image of diversity for outsiders. There are countless stories out there about the battle Black authors face when trying to advocate for themselves and their books in this industry - even down to cover designs. I count myself fortunate that I haven’t gone through this. Once again, I will emphasise the importance of a good agent. Having someone as your sounding board, one who is empathetic and won’t make you feel over the top or deranged, makes a world of difference.