She had to convince her boss - the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, Jonathan Karp - to release the money for Chan’s advance against royalties by the time her bid was due to Kaffel Simonoff, just one week after receiving the submission. “I knew it was going to be competitive.”Įven as she was bidding on the manuscript, Davis had to pitch it internally. She first phoned Chan from the waiting room of her dog’s veterinarian. “Your role as an acquiring editor is to work quickly,” said Dawn Davis, the former Simon & Schuster editor who ultimately won the auction. ![]() The winner may not be the highest bidder, but the one whose vision best matches the author’s. Others have multiple rounds where publishers try to outbid each other, though there is a twist. Some auctions are blind: Publishers are asked to submit their single highest bid without knowing what their competitors are offering. They were interested - enough for Kaffel Simonoff to organize an auction. “I was bouncing off the walls,” she said. The day of the manuscript’s submission, Chan said, she was “operating almost entirely on adrenaline.” Her husband took her out for a huge lunch at their favorite Chinese restaurant, where she waited for updates. For months, over lunch and in emails with editors, Kaffel Simonoff seeded her enthusiasm for “The School for Good Mothers” with this audience. The most discerning of readers, these editors are the ones who select the books that a publisher will invest in. Well before a book is released, the manuscript meets its first, and toughest, audience: the acquiring editors at publishing houses. Finding a publisher: “It was going to be competitive.” After Chan signed with Kaffel Simonoff in July 2019, the two began several rounds of revisions to further develop the speculative elements of the plot along with the characters’ emotional arcs.īy November 2019, Chan’s manuscript was ready to be shopped to publishers. Many agents effectively serve as an author’s first editor. “She asked, ‘Is there one right way to mother?’ I just couldn’t look away from that clarity of vision.” “Jessamine had a razor-sharp sense of her own writerly intentionality and a fluency in her novel’s ‘aboutness’ from the start,” Kaffel Simonoff said. Halfway through reading, Kaffel Simonoff wrote back: She was hooked. (Several other agents also requested the manuscript - seven ultimately passed.) Kaffel Simonoff replied immediately, requesting the full draft. ![]() Connecting with Kaffel Simonoff was a “pie in the sky” dream, Chan said, but she sent a query to her, along with 11 other agents. Most reputable agents receive hundreds, if not thousands, of unsolicited pitch letters a year - the part of their inbox known as the “slush pile.”Ī mutual acquaintance recommended she email Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, who represents Leni Zumas, the author of “ Red Clocks,” a speculative novel about a near-future in which abortion is illegal in the United States. Many agents ask for a pitch letter, known in the industry as a query, plus a few sample pages to get a feel for the writer’s style. They broker book deals with publishing houses, negotiate the legalese of contracts, fight for authors’ best interests and help clients develop their long-term careers. ![]() The talent managers of the book world, literary agents help authors navigate the complexities of the publishing business. Often, it’s the hardest part of the journey. Finding an agent: “I just couldn’t look away.”įinding a good agent is the first step on the road to publication. Here, we take you behind the scenes to see how a book is born - the winding path it takes, the many hands that touch it, the near-misses and the lucky breaks that help determine its fate. How does a debut novel go from a “very messy” draft on a writer’s desk to a published book, on display in bookstores around the country?
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