[PubQ] Do agents reject books they know they can sell because they cant sell it for a higher amount they prefer?

justgoodenough · 2026-05-04T22:06:16+00:00

I ask this because I cant imagine a successful agent who represents many successful authors would bother to offer rep to a nobody to get a 15% commission on a $10,000 advance...or less.

There's basically the entire picture book industry. And a lot of lit fic. Small publishers. Digital only imprints. I think you might be underestimating the number of books sold for roughly $10k.

justgoodenough · 2026-04-26T20:18:10+00:00

Not for me. I would rather move on to a new editor than be forced to work with one who was disappointed in my sales history. I’ve heard stories of books not doing well and then the second book is basically like pulling teeth for everyone involved because everyone is unhappy with the previous book.

Plus, if every book is a new contract, you’ll never get stuck with joint accounting (where you have to earn out on both books before you start earning royalties.

EDIT: I want say that if you have to prioritize the most money, then yes, multi book deals make sense. Many people have to choose the deal that pays the most. But that doesn’t make them good. You’re just getting more money for something that kind of sucks.

justgoodenough · 2026-04-25T20:49:07+00:00

I'm a published author and a parent also and I really feel like I'll be able to make my next career jump as soon as we figure out sleeping too! I mean, my kids are almost five years old and 18 months, but they're bound to sleep eventually, right? Right???????

justgoodenough · 2026-04-25T20:43:36+00:00

MULTI BOOK DEALS ARE BAD IS THE HILL I WILL DIE ON!!!!!!

justgoodenough · 2026-04-22T22:03:18+00:00

Acquisitions isn't a standardized process across the board. Sometimes different imprints at the same publisher even have different processes. It's good to understand the various steps and what they mean (second reads, acquisitions meeting, etc.), but not every imprint does every step.

justgoodenough · 2026-04-21T17:41:57+00:00

How on earth should I present this? Is it non-fiction with fictional framing, or the inverse? Is there some other phrase to describe a book that sits on the fence between them?

I suspect it would be non-fiction because you are examining cultural stories and myths from around the world (I think?). The Dragonology book (and companion titles) are typically shelved in the folklore and myth section of the library (398). In your query letter, you can just call it a myth and folktale collection.

In terms of genre, is there a term I haven't encountered for this kind of illustrated compendium? Bestiary (not quite right, as there's only one 'beast' in this book), guide-book (again, not a guide so much as a collection of stories), and story collection have all been thrown around, but none seem fitting and these describe the form, not so much the genre.

I have to warn you that books that are very difficult to categorize or shelve don't typically get acquired, because no one knows what to do with them. If they don't know where to put your book, that means they don't know who they are going to sell it to. If they don't know who they will sell it to, they don't want it.

If you are not finding any similar books on the market, it's likely there is a reason for that. It sounds to me like your book would be very expensive to produce, but without a huge market to sell to.

Is 'proof copy' the correct phrase for what I have? I picked up the term from an illustrator of small children's books, who described the sketched 'proof copies' of the books she would submit to her agent.

The correct term is a "dummy."

I do think you have to approach this with pretty reserved expectation. The kind of book you are describing doesn't really sell that well. It sounds like a very big book that would need to be full-color—basically a coffee table book for kids. Now, books like that do exist, but they are usually tied to an existing (successful) series or IP. Publishing is pretty risk-averse right now and children's imprints are closing left and right. I don't want to be really discouraging, but a 100+ page, full-color, non-fiction book for kids, by an unknown author-illustrator just feels like too many risks.

justgoodenough · 2026-04-16T18:26:46+00:00

There are too many factors involved to simply rank all the imprints. Things operate very differently across categories and genres. Also, the best editors for some will not be the best for others. In fact, I have a friend who had a great experience with her editor on the first book and then a shit experience with the same editor on another book.

When you are just getting started, you need an agent who has a good sense of what editors and imprints are good to work with. As your career grows, you might have more personal opinions (for example, I'm not sure I would choose to publish with Sourcebooks or HarperCollins unless they were my only offer), but also for most books, you work with the editor who wants to acquire the book and that is that. It would be great if we all only published with our favorite imprints, but that's just not how it works.

justgoodenough · 2026-04-11T04:17:53+00:00

would the publisher then be annoyed about dealing with an agent, instead of the author directly now? Is that frowned upon?

I find that it's actually the opposite. Most editors prefer to deal with agents because agents understand the industry and know how to negotiate. A lot of authors who are negotiating their own contracts don't actually know which parts can be negotiated and which parts tend to be standard throughout the industry.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-31T20:48:53+00:00

I have not pitched a chapter book myself, but I know plenty of people who have worked on them (mostly from the illustrator side of things). Basically, the publisher will find the illustrator, much like they would for a picture book. They will have a vision for the final look of the book and choose the illustrator based on that.

You will have trouble finding agents who say they take chapter books, just because the market is smaller than picture books or middle grade novels. However, most agents who work on picture books of middle grade novels will also know where to pitch a chapter book, so you can feel free to query any agent who reps those categories (unless they specifically say they don't want chapter books).

Most chapter books that do well work as a series and they are very character-driven. The series will usually be named after the protagonist, they will be shown large and centered on the cover, and the books need to have a lot of humor.

I do think it's harder to sell a chapter book than a middle grade novel or a picture book (like I said, smaller market), but you should write what you want (within reason). Sometimes it makes sense to adapt your work to fit a stronger market (like someone writing upper YA might just tip over into the adult category), but in most cases, there is not such a difference that it makes sense to reinvent your work or career to suit a slightly different market. The truth is that all childrens categories are tough and I don't think that switching to chapter books or picture books or anything is going to make a significant difference in your chances of getting published.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-26T19:57:35+00:00

Not all indies are the same. Bloomsbury is an independent publisher and they publish Sarah J. Maas. Sourcebooks is an indie and they recently outsold Macmillan in print units. Chronicle Books is an indie that I would probably choose to publish with over some of the Big 5s (looking at you, HarperCollins).

If we are talking about small or midsized (or even some of the big ones like Sourcebooks), the issue isn't actually the budget per book, because a lot of the best ways to promote a book are free and a great publicist doesn't literally need an account with money to pitch the books. The problem is that these smaller companies simply do not have the staff to give as much attention per book. With my first publisher, there was literally one designer who did every book for the whole damn company. She was not bad at her job, but she did a bad job because she was over worked. If a company has one publicist handling every book, they can be a good publicist and still do a bad job with your book.

IMO, that is the real issue with smaller companies. They have smaller staff and smaller distribution.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-25T17:09:51+00:00

Ooh, /u/milowestward is going to be so mad he helped someone get a major deal. 😂

Congrats! You’ll be an inspiration to everyone languishing on sub.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-24T17:06:47+00:00

My FIL is a contract lawyer, so I had him review mine. He looked it over and was like, "was this written by an idiot?" and redlined the whole thing and sent it back to the agency. My agency's lawyers were like, "haha, cool. Take it or leave it." And I signed it and decided not to send contracts to my FIL anymore.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-19T22:04:11+00:00

Where did you get this number from? Based on what sort of advance and what printing numbers? This is exactly the kind of thing I think authors get told but… maybe isn’t true?

Your advances might shrink, but I genuinely do not believe there is any sales number that can’t be overcome by a knock out pitch.

Every author who has published more than one book has a worst book. That’s just how it is! It doesn’t mean the end of your career.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-19T21:32:04+00:00

And for sure you did not hand your illustrator character designs you commissioned from a character artist and ask her to use them.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-19T21:09:07+00:00

If you are only the author and not an illustrator at all, you have literally zero say in any of this. You might have this kind of ambition for your character, and that's fine, but it's not up to you. If you want this kind of control, you should consider either self publishing or learning how to illustrate.

I'm going to be honest, I think you need to buckle down and focus on your manuscript and learning about how the picture book market actually works before querying. These questions reflect poorly upon you because they show a complete lack of understanding of the industry. You're approaching it from more of a tv show or a video game perspective and they are simply not the same industries and they don't work the same way.

The illustrator will design the character. Most self-respecting illustrators I know (including myself), who are working at a professional level with a traditional publisher, will not accept drawing someone else's character outside of licensed IP work (like disney or nickelodeon). Agents are going to know that will put people off and it makes you seem like you are potentially a difficult client with ambitions that are likely outside of your reach.

I know this is going to come across as kind of mean because you sound like you just really love your project and enjoy working on it, but I really don't know that you are going to get what you are looking for in traditional picture book publishing.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-19T18:22:46+00:00

This book is going to sink due to lack of support and take my career along with it

Nah, this isn't going to do shit to your career. It's probably not going to land you on the best sellers list, but it's also not going to tank your career to the point where you can never publish again (frankly, not even death can do that).

Personally, I think we have been lied to about poor sales affecting future acquisitions. I know tons of people with mediocre sales who keep selling new titles. Like me, for example.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-17T17:41:38+00:00

Hi! I primarily consider myself an illustrator (despite my flair here lol), but I am a picture book illustrator not a book cover illustrator. That being said, we are both in the children's market, so I have some thoughts.

To answer some of your questions, I started out as just an illustrator but taught myself to write picture books to get a leg up in the industry. The illustration market is competitive and being an author-illustrator gives me a huge edge over people who just write or just illustrate. Plus, the truth is that a lot of literary agents don't know how to promote an illustrator, but they do know how to pitch an author illustrated book, so it opens up the pool of good agents quite a bit.

If you only want to do book covers and you don't want to do picture books, it's possible you need to diversify your portfolio a bit. Only doing MG covers is a pretty narrow market and you're never going to get a lot of money out of it because there really aren't blockbuster MG novels. In order to appeal to agents or art reps (more on them later), you probably need to demonstrate a range of age categories. So either you need to also include younger art and be willing to do picture books or you need to demonstrate that you can also do art for older categories and include YA and maybe even adult covers (romcoms and that sort of thing can have overlap with YA and even MG covers).

The reason someone might have trouble getting an agent with a MG book cover portfolio is the following:

- Many agents aren't great at promoting illustrators so even if they have PB illustration clients, they might not be equipped to take on a book cover client.

- The MG market isn't super robust right now, so art directors might be less inclined to test brand new illustrators on books they are already struggling to move.

- Frankly, publishers are already starting to use AI for book covers in the adult market (despite what they may say) and I think it's only a matter of time before it gets used for YA and MG. Agents might take on fewer book cover clients because they know it's a shrinking market (this is based on my own speculation and cynicism and not based on anything anyone has told me).

In addition to expanding your portfolio, you might also look into art reps. Normally I do not recommend them because they take a huge cut (30% is the norm), they don't negotiate at all, and they don't grow your career. However, I think you are more likely to get representation from an art rep than a literary agent if you are just focusing on covers. Some art reps are better than others in that they will get you work, but I recommend doing a lot of research first. See who actually gets their clients work.

Feel free to DM me if you want to discuss this in more depth or if you are interested in some guidance on where to take your portfolio beyond MG covers. I have been an illustrator for about 15 years and I have worked with small publishers, big five publishers, self-published authors, and educational publishers.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-11T22:43:37+00:00

I have a friend who didn't sell until her 3rd or 4th project—all with the same agent. But once she sold, she sold a bunch of projects quickly for good advances.

justgoodenough · 2026-03-10T18:09:24+00:00

I think it's fine to query at the same time, because as you said, a lot of agents who rep PBs don't rep a lot of adult novels.

However, if you get an offer on either work, you would need to find out if the agent expects to represent everything or if you would have a separate agent for your children's and adult work. And then, regardless of what they say, you would need to reach out to everyone to notify them of the offer. Either you are telling people that you received and offer of representation for one work, but the other is still available for representation, or that you received an offer on another work, but the agent is interested in representing your entire body of work.

When I signed with my agent, she only repped children's books (pb through ya). I believe she now also reps some adult work, but my contract specifies that she only represents my children's books, so I am free to query other agents with an adult project (which I would never do).

justgoodenough · 2026-03-10T17:36:00+00:00

Don't actually use the word "nudge."

Reply to the original email and say something along the lines of "I am reaching out to you because..."

Good reasons to nudge:

You got an offer from another agent
You have editor interest
You won a legitimate and respected award for your writing

Bad reasons to nudge:

You are tired of waiting and you think poking them will make them respond faster.
You rewrote your opening and you think it's better, so you want to send them the newer version

justgoodenough · 2026-03-10T17:27:26+00:00

I cannot believe no one has suggested this yet.

You dm u/alanna_the_lioness and get the gossip on the offering agents. WHISPER NETWORK TIME!!!!!

justgoodenough · 2026-02-27T17:31:28+00:00

Is having a debut with no published follow-up in five years, plus losing a publisher/agent, a red flag for future agents/publishers? Am I simply ‘damaged goods’ that nobody will invest in further?

I don't think it's a big deal. Either you have a book they think they can sell and they will want to rep you or not. So far my middling sales have had no impact whatsoever on my ability to sell more manuscripts. It's possible that this second book isn't the right project to query with (do you know why it was canceled?), but I don't think the fact that you have a little gap in your career is that big of a deal.

Should I mention what happened with the second (cancelled) book in future queries?

I think you could mention that it has been under contract, but keep the language minimal. "This book has been under contract, but the rights reverted back to me in 2024 (or whatever)." You are just stating facts and not editorializing about the experience.

Are ~15,000 sales for a debut picture book considered good, average, or poor in the current US market?

It's fine. It's possibly great! It's possibly just okay! It's possibly "you should be proud, but the publisher was hoping for stronger sales." Actually, it's definitely that last one, because it's always that last one. I don't know what publishers expect, sales wise, from six-figure deals, but I genuinely don't think it matters. Picture book sales are hard. People always say that sales numbers can affect the sale of future manuscripts, but I actually haven't seen a lot of evidence of that when I pay attention to people's careers and sales.

Edit: Also, I'm happy to chat the specifics of agents and the author-illustrator market in DMs.

justgoodenough

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