My picture book is on submission! What does that mean? Well, this is the phase when you’ve signed with a super duper agent (see previous post), you’ve made any edits to your manuscript that the agent suggests and then the agent submits your book to a list of editors at various publishing houses who he thinks would be a great fit.
This is one of the many reasons why having a good agent is so important! Believe it or not, in the middle of the cornfield in which I live, I am not lunching with editors on a daily basis. I’m new to the publishing world and don’t have contacts. My agent does. In fact, at many publishers, you cannot even submit a manuscript on your own. You have to do so through an agent. There are so many writers out there, agents only take on books they are pretty sure they can sell. This is why the word on the street is that it’s harder to get an agent these days than it is to sell the book.
My agent put together a nifty list of editors he thought would be perfect for my book and sent my manuscript to them. And now we wait.
Many things can happen during this time. All of them could say, “I hate it!” (unlikely, since the agent has done his homework). One, or more, editors could like it and make an offer (yay!). If numerous editors express an interest in bidding, then the book can go to auction. This doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, it’s pretty awesome.
There are several ways to do an auction, one being a traditional auction where the editors keep bidding higher and higher, in rounds, until there’s one left standing, at which point, the author takes that bid. There’s also something known as a “best bid blind auction” where everyone just puts their best offer out there from the start, not knowing what the other publishers are doing. The author isn’t forced to take the top offer. Maybe there’s an offer that came in lower, but the author just really feels like that editor/publisher would be great to work with. That’s a-okay!
The waiting while you're out on submission is a lot different than the waiting while you're querying. Though there's a lot of waiting around during querying, it's an active process for an author: a bunch of rejects come in? Send out more queries. Or, examine the query and possibly re-work it. Keep researching more agents. On submission, however, it's all out of your hands. I find the waiting is harder, too. I'm on D right now, though shedding season is upon us….
Ha! I find my dog is a very willing partner to my procrastination. I can surely combine B&C with him! I hope your waiting pays off in a book contract!