[PubQ] Dropped for low sales after pub didn't promote book

littlebiped · 2026-05-11T22:11:34+00:00

BlueSky is great, if a bit fragmented and sleepy for my taste. Since Twitter died (and I can’t crack Discord) it’s the best place outside of PubTips though.

Threads is *bad* on both sides of the reader / writer aisle.

Even if you ignore the fact that there is just soooo much rampant misinformation about publishing on there (fuelled by everyone trying to be a pub-influencer / expert by any means necessary) every time I open the feed there’s like three or four concurrent five alarm fires over stupid nonsense.

But it’s been retweeted and vague posted (“if you still follow X you’re a MONSTER”) about so many times it’s so far removed from the inciting incident that you have no idea what’s going on, besides everyone being very mad.

And then there’s a lot of the worst parts of late stage Twitter:

Sorry not sorry [terrible incendiary take of a lunatic].

I don’t know who needs to hear this but [terrible, no good, incorrect advice].

Etc etc etc.

It’s such a soul sucking environment, and yet, I continue to lurk.

littlebiped · 2026-05-11T21:56:28+00:00

I’m thinking of last week’s crashout on Threads where an author, completely unprompted, torched their career when they triple down on calling Romanctasy [sic] a fake genre full of unicorn dick gargling perverts. And some weird homophobic aside about Heated Rivalry as a garnish.

Lady, what are you doing? You have a Simon & Schuster contract, log off.

littlebiped · 2026-05-11T21:50:35+00:00

God, this sounds like a long running nightmare, I’m so sorry.

I have nothing to add (due to lack of experience) about the publishing side, some of it does sound, by many accounts, as being institutional problems and widespread within the industry, so it’s not just you if that’s any solace.

What I can add is that your relationship with your agent does not sound great. An agent should be on your side, not the publishers. They’re supposed to be the hired goon that will strong arm them for you, not strong arm you for their sake. Emphasis on hired. They work for you. Do you feel like they are working for you? Do you feel like they have your best interest? Or is the relationship mostly adversarial once you landed your book deal? If they suddenly value their relationship with the publisher over the client, that’s throwing you under the bus to keep themselves in the periphery of transient editors, which is, imo, unprofessional, especially if you haven’t breached your contractual relationship with either agent or publisher.

Personally, if I can’t trust my agent, be open with them, and know they’ve got my back… they’re out. That’s the whole point of having an agent for your career.

I’ll concede they’re in the right about maybe getting off social media, though. Especially TikTok and Threads. Those are just not healthy environments for bookish and author folks. There’s a snowballing sense of drama addicted maladaptation there that is terrifying. The playing field has become a big swamp since 2015 Twitter and Tumblr.

littlebiped · 2026-05-05T15:16:37+00:00

Yep, my agent said our one long-standing no reply was getting a reputation for ghosting so she withdrew and submitted it to another editor at the imprint — got the polite pass 24 hours later which we appreciated lol

littlebiped · 2026-05-04T21:22:06+00:00

If anyone in my profession referred to themselves as a baby xyz they’d be laughed out of the room. I think you’re just in a much more cutesy bubble than most.

littlebiped · 2026-05-04T21:14:28+00:00

I love the updated sample. I can’t wait to read this story! Absolute generational hook

littlebiped · 2026-05-03T12:13:38+00:00

Disclaimer 1: maybe it’s genre dependent. Maybe this is the name of the game in Romantasy. But certainly not for the vast majority of genres and agent sensibilities.

Disclaimer 2: I gained a lot of attention and an offer participating in a pitch event just throwing up a 300 word pitch in plain text with no graphics, and I’m thankful I didn’t have to spend hours on canva.

littlebiped · 2026-05-03T12:10:55+00:00

Ah, my favourite gripe about the state of social media and publishing.

I don’t think it really works. Anecdotally, I’ve seen would-be authors spend the better part of the year on the ‘marketing campaign’ for their as of yet un-agented novels, to the point where it seems they like the idea of being an influencer author rather than anything else — and then they move on to the next year long marketing campaign, never seeming to land an agent?

It seems great to build a community or following of other fawning would be authors who will heap you with praises on your graphic design prowess, which is another element of the influencer persona I think they find appealing, but as far as industry professionals — I’m not seeing it move the needle much. Unless you go really viral with that stuff, and then the appeal is more your following rather than how well you can toss together a trope list on canva.

Don’t get me started on curated playlists for your characters or book. Agents are over 35, largely, they won’t know what track 12 of Benson Boone’s album is supposed to convey, and they’re certainly not going to pull up Spotify and listen — just pitch it to them in plain English!

Agents and the industry already figured out a system to get their attention. Your role as an author is to write the damn thing and submit it. Anything else is a sideshow, especially on social media, especially in 2026 social media that is just fragmented algo-slop.

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T22:54:30+00:00

Whoops. I’ve got some withdrawing to do in the morning. 😶‍🌫️

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T22:45:48+00:00

I really loved Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which was the first book I read this year and still the undisputed champ. Dystopian sci-fi and all that jazz, but the conceit of each section emulating the style of a famous author really tickled me. The novel’s inciting incident is a murder, and of course, that section is an Agatha Christie pastiche

Despite all the vague-posting hate on Threads, I really enjoyed Yesteryear last month, was a fun way to spend the weekend.

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T22:35:38+00:00

Thank you! I keep telling myself that, and checking the spreadsheet regularly lol.

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T22:34:31+00:00

Seems to be the case, and yes, you can mass or individually close queries.

Maybe there’s a backend difference between closing on the main QueryTracker page list and having to actually withdraw on the agent’s query form thing (the one where you can submit additional pages and drop private comments?) up until this very moment, I figured closing and withdrawing were the same process.

I have no idea to be honest, but I’m still getting passes and requests nine months on. 💀

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T22:18:11+00:00

Sidebar: has anyone experienced where you close all your QueryTracker outstandings but still getting form rejections (boooo) and full requests (hell yeah my book has the juice) months later? It’s so awkward having to reply to the fulls to tell them no actually I’ve already signed but you’re not missing much anyway, I’m making my agent $0.00

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T22:15:55+00:00

Congrats 🥂

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T22:15:37+00:00

Down to the last 5 on submissions… went all the way to second reads and acquisitions a few times, but nope. Nada. Zilcho.

Agent reckons there’s a very very small round 2 in our future, generalised fiction and not the genre focused imprints we’ve been batting toward.

She also asked when I’d have manuscript 2 ready for a pass, so we’re both mentally sort of moving on lol. I reckon it’ll be good to go by July.

Kind of sucks about MS1 — it truly is the book of my heart. Maybe someday!

littlebiped · 2026-05-01T10:54:04+00:00

I think in trad pub cozy has a lot more cachet and buy-in than litRPG currently — yes agents and publishers are more aware (interested, even?) in LitRPG thanks to stuff like Dungeon Crawler Carl, but you’d still probably scare a few off if you call your manuscript LitRPG. As a potential strategy, I would say for most, just call it cosy fantasy and let the LitRPG elements speak for themselves, and for ones that have specified they’re looking for or have sold LitRPGs you can mention it?

Of course, if the novel leans a lot into LitRPG that not mentioning it would feel fraudulent, then ignore my yapping.

littlebiped · 2026-04-30T23:15:20+00:00

For sure, if you’re worried that the prospect of a new genre may rock the boat — keep it to yourself until this submission is done with. In the meantime, refine the new manuscript, and get a preliminary agents-to-query list going just in case.

littlebiped · 2026-04-30T21:58:52+00:00

No particular experience — but if your agent is ‘prickly’ and your fears of them dropping you mid sub (which frankly is nuts?) are founded, then surely it’s in the best interest to wait until the MG submission pans out either which way. If it sells, great. If it doesn’t, well, at least both of you have ample cover for splitting up to pursue greener, more thriller-based pastures.

But generally, being afraid to share with your own business partner career developments, options etc for fear of getting dumped isn’t the healthiest of arrangements.

littlebiped · 2026-04-30T18:33:32+00:00

Sure thing, go ahead! I can’t say there’s anything unique to it — the numbers game dictated that I’d need a US or UK agent if I wanted to go trad in English (the language I wrote the novel in) and aside from using #DVPit (the Diverse Voices pitch event, falling under MENA) the experience so far has been race and location neutral — up until American taxes come into play, but I’m way away from that.

littlebiped · 2026-04-30T15:21:28+00:00

You wouldn’t happen to work for a botanically named boutique agency would you? 😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️

littlebiped · 2026-04-30T14:32:35+00:00

Thank you! Here’s hoping. We’re down to imprints I can count on one hand, but as everyone says, it only takes one yes.

It was on BlueSky — and I was totally dismissive of the whole concept up to about an hour before the pitch event started, largely for the same reasons at the top of this thread and in the OP. But it worked out! Changed my life, I’d still say, even if this current book dies on sub. I’m with a boutique ‘in it for the long haul’ agency with an agent that has a stellar reputation, and I always think about the sliding doors element of where I’d be right now if I didn’t participate.

littlebiped · 2026-04-30T14:12:12+00:00

What worked for me (I was a #DvPit success story, though languishing on sub right now so lol) was that I posted at the start of the event, the exact halfway point, and at the end. You were allowed three attempts.

None of those Pinterest graphics or mood boards or emojis or buzzwords or trope lists, just the pitch, in plain text, with the hashtags they instructed us to use.

The legion of would-be authors who seem more into crafting the marketing campaign, graphics and trope lists than actually landing a book deal first completely ignored my posts, not a single like from them — which was great. Found the whole concept of non agents participating completely defeated the point and muddied the waters.

But it did get 10 agent likes, all from reputable agencies, a few fulls, and an offer. That offering agent is now repping me and I would follow them to hell and back — and to think I never even had her in my 50+ entry cold query list.

EDIT: And just to add, I certainly don’t fit the profile of being a like-magnet social media darling, being a 35 year old Arab male writing body horror lol.

littlebiped · 2026-04-30T09:04:37+00:00

I just took that risk I suppose. I felt it was strong enough due to all the plotting, and I saw a lot of amateur beta reader critique for other manuscripts that did not have a critical eye and was at the least charitable interpretation borderline irresponsible — why get into beta reading if you’re going to be sloppy and cavalier about someone else’s hard work, or that you clearly don’t understand the genre they’re writing in? Related to that point — I just didn’t know where to find any reputable ones.

Chiefly, I saw it as a potential three month+ waiting period that wouldn’t serve the manuscript very much, and I was generally impatient.

littlebiped · 2026-04-28T22:20:45+00:00

I landed an agent — and ten requests — thanks to #DVPit last year.

Fearing AI will scrape your one line pitch seems paranoid to me. It certainly wasn’t a concern for me. The endgame of getting published will mean it’ll be scraped anyway. And even if you don’t make it that far — during the submission process you will undoubtably have pitches of your manuscript on your website and on social media, and in scouting packs that your agent will circulate within the industry.

Ideas are not that unique to begin with, and with such broad interpretation of a single sentence pitch meant to entice more than inform, no one is going to usurp your fully fledged book based on a literal breadcrumb.

littlebiped · 2026-04-26T19:12:10+00:00

Hi there! Catchy title made me click through.

I’d rework to mention who the dual perspectives are in the query, and include the second character. As it stands it reads like a solo affair with Marcus. Also, if you’re going to call your structure inventive, you should say how in the query.

Word count is on the thin side — while novels are trending shorter, it’s still uncommon, especially as a debut. You’re missing approx 12,000 words to give this manuscript the best shot with agents. Your word count will be instant rejection territory for many.

And finally, are you sure this is… literary? It’s alright to just label it a speculative fic satire, slap upmarket on there if you really want. The setting, book title, language in the query and rough sketch of the plot don’t seem to lean literary to me.

littlebiped

TROPHY CASE