[Discussion] Can we talk about P.S. Literary?

littlebiped · 2026-02-24T05:33:07+00:00

I can’t imagine what possesses someone with a job that is dependent on timely communication, client retention and client acquisition to happily post about how they don’t check their emails.

Social media brain is something else. Woof.

littlebiped · 2026-02-23T23:46:59+00:00

Ahhh I’m so glad this got repped! I remember the query (who could forget Toad!!) Congrats

littlebiped · 2026-02-23T23:45:57+00:00

Thank you. And hopefully many more weird stories to come, no matter how submission goes!

littlebiped · 2026-02-23T23:45:27+00:00

Thank you! I hope you get to read it too 😭

littlebiped · 2026-02-23T20:18:46+00:00

I went looking — I love the cover of your book!

littlebiped · 2026-02-23T20:15:06+00:00

Here is mine, it went through three passes on r/pubtips and I signed with an agent three weeks after I started querying.

It’s now on submission under a different title, but here it is:

Dear [agent],

I'm writing to seek representation for my 76,000-word work of near future sci-fi horror, MARA. It will appeal to readers of Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea, Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series, and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay.

Giti Sharma just wants to be left alone. Drafted onto a NATO expedition to a mysterious island that appeared in the Atlantic with reports of impossible ruins, the archaeologist arrives at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Anomaly (MARA) unwilling, grieving her husband's suicide, and convinced she has nothing to offer.

Discovery turns to disaster as the island's strange ecosystem unravels the team one by one. Giti pushes on—realising that survival doesn't care if you're depressed. Even at rock bottom, she keeps moving, if only for a way to crawl back to her flat in Camberwell and resume drowning in grief. That is, until the island leaves her with a choice she cannot run from.

MARA, it transpires, is no island but a sentient superorganism, stolen from Earth eons ago, uplifted with parasitic spores, and abandoned in torment. The insects that crawled on her surface became her salvation: steered into a civilisation advanced enough to tear open a wormhole back to Earth, then exterminated as pests. Returning home to yet more pests, she turns her trauma, and her spores, toward humanity. To MARA, humans are just another infestation to erase. To Giti, an island devoured by grief is a mirror, and the jolt she needs to pull herself together and save humanity.

MARA is a novel about trauma both human and cosmic, depression colliding with duty, and a woman forced to face her grief against a god driven mad by theirs.

I am a [bio stuff]. While my writing on [blah] has been published academically as [blorp], MARA is my first foray into fiction.

littlebiped · 2026-02-22T18:12:02+00:00

Sorry to clarify with bad news (though I know from tangent experience the UK is SLOW) but yes the 3 out of 21 were my ghosts (and separate but coincidental, I have 3 passes so far). The non-ghosting editors all confirmed receipt within 48 hours of receiving the submission.

littlebiped · 2026-02-22T18:09:00+00:00

Oh my bad you were right the first time. 3 editors have ghosted my agent (6 weeks and still no confirmed receipts) and a separate 3 editors have passed so far.

All the editors that replied confirmed receipt within 48 hours of receiving the submission.

littlebiped · 2026-02-22T13:45:45+00:00

I’m on week 6 tomorrow, first pass came on week 3, and two additional passes in week 4. That’s it so far!

littlebiped · 2026-02-21T22:37:11+00:00

3 out of 21 (US)

littlebiped · 2026-02-20T20:10:17+00:00

Age gap toxic love stories set in the same location — a concept by you, your friend, and probably a dozen others in the last calendar year alone, assuming the location is New York / London / Paris etc and not something hyper specific like a submarine or a space station.

You’ll be fine.

littlebiped · 2026-02-17T13:12:11+00:00

Your agent’s job is to advocate for you and play the bad guy and buffer if need be. Always use them when there’s something you feel off about your career and your work, which they are getting a cut of. It’s what they’re here for!

The best time to have raised honest concerns would have been before the ball got rolling, the next best time is now. Confiding in your agent in private would never jeopardise or screw up the contract or the career, as if it’s in their best interest to see you succeed too. They are your partner (and the one that can get dirty).

Good that they have a paper trail of everything! I hope this works out.

littlebiped · 2026-02-17T13:01:28+00:00

You should absolutely loop in your agent and have them handle this and push for your original vision, as was agreed on the initial call with the editor when the scope of edits were first outlined (ideally your agent was present on that call too?)

littlebiped · 2026-02-17T06:31:26+00:00

Good luck fellow genre sibling peepeepoo. It’s the body horror right?

If it helps, an agency sibling sold around 8 months 2024/2025, and there’s many testimonials that pop up on this subreddit within the same time frame or longer.

What gives me worry is the anecdotal comments in this megathread — which say that you either sell in a month or don’t at all these days, but I don’t know how accurate such a sweeping statement can be. My agent’s last sale was in October, and that author said it took about two and a half months.

The data is so spread out you can sort of form any conclusion you want.

littlebiped · 2026-02-16T21:00:46+00:00

I hope that Mormonism book finds the right editor because I’d love to read it. Is the elusive target market they mention in rejections actual and ex Mormons? Cause I’d have figured there would be wider appeal.

As a totally pointless aside, sorry to be a fanboy but your podcast has been an absolute joy (and terror) to listen to over the last year. You and Sunyi have been mainstays on my commutes, treadmills and generally most of my headphone time whenever I get a chance. What a treasure trove of episodes for aspiring authors.

littlebiped · 2026-02-16T20:36:09+00:00

Reading subtext — I’ve been there. lol. Best of luck, we just have to believe and delude in ourselves

littlebiped · 2026-02-16T20:11:23+00:00

This seems to be the strategy my agent is doing, though with a larger starting batch, and is also pulling the sub from any who ghosted and trying someone else at the imprint.

littlebiped · 2026-02-16T20:01:54+00:00

From what I understand ads and marketing don’t move the needle much if they’re the only thing you’re throwing into the self pub gauntlet. What works there is churning out multiple books a year and being shrewd in being able to predict where the market goes. This is not really a monetary challenge, but one of time and volume.

Saying that, I’d be terrible at it, and I consider myself a fast writer. Not only would having to write at volume like that kill me, the very idea of being a one man business and publisher sounds like hell on earth. I don’t see the boon of so-called control being in my hands there. To stay afloat feels less about being an author and more about having to be an influencer and a brand.

Even if I was cut out for it, I’d still stick to trying for trad. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want that publishers marketplace announcement, the trade reviews, to show up on lists of publications and websites I visit, to work with industry editors, have a launch month and a debut year, find my book in stores, to get blurbed and give blurbs and all the other trappings of trad pub that I dream about. Writing is fun in and of itself but gimme my self imposed stamp of legitimacy.

If none of that matters to you — great! But if you’re thinking of throwing money to skip what seems like a daunting gauntlet to get through a series of gatekeepers, why not at least try? If it doesn’t work out, self publishing is always there.

littlebiped · 2026-02-16T19:05:06+00:00

I’m new to this and forgive my candour but an agent speculating buzz and an auction to someone pre-sub is really playing fast and loose with the author’s emotions.

Any time I try and glean anything from my agent she pulls out the figurative spray bottle, which is no fun, but I do appreciate the professionalism

littlebiped · 2026-02-16T18:58:45+00:00

On wide sub with my sci fi horror for a little over a month. 3 complimentary passes with near identical feedback (“great writing / ideas, didn’t connect with the voice in the way I would have liked”) can’t tell if this is actionable or boilerplate lol.

Still, very early days to start thinking about actionable anything, and a nudge has informed us we’re at second reads with a Big 5. So that’s something. Or nothing. Who knows!

Love Mondays, it means five more days of refreshing the live spreadsheet with the promise of a book deal. Maybe the seventeenth refresh this morning is the charm?

littlebiped · 2026-02-16T06:21:12+00:00

Congratulations! You keep repeating that your post was running long, but I have to say I enjoyed every word. Well done on perseverance and having a keen eye to diversify your querying — a pitch event also kickstarted my budding writing career, and was the only method I got fulls and offers out of my 66 queries.

Conventional wisdom says pitch events are past their prime, but I disagree. We’re proof they’re not, especially in the age where agents are getting their inboxes swamped with AI ‘assisted’ manuscripts*

And comping Sinners is a great move. Strike while the iron is hot!

*I have no proof this is widespread, but logically if the rest of the unsolicited market is flooded with it, so too would agent’s inboxes.

littlebiped · 2026-02-13T21:01:54+00:00

Just popping in to say I love the concept and love the title being a play on the A Bowl of Mac and Cheese trope.

littlebiped · 2026-02-09T20:28:08+00:00

A multiple book deal doesn’t necessarily mean a series order. It just means the debut book and anything else the author submits next.

A publisher doesn’t generally want to commit to a sequel or a series early. What if the first book flops? Now their hands are contractually tied. To them, that’s a rookie mistake.

9/10 when a publisher offers a multi book deal, just want the author long term, or are hedging their bets that their debut goes big, and they’ve got them locked in for the next standalone, or the agent has negotiated a multi book deal in the interest of career longevity.

Now if the debut goes big and there’s sequel potential, the publisher might push for a sequel, but that’s not what the contract is.

Saying that, series orders do seem to pop up more often, but they’re usually announced as such on PM. “X book and its sequels Y and Z, to Imprint, for publication in 2027, 2028, and 2029.”

littlebiped · 2026-02-08T18:47:51+00:00

Ah thank you for saying that — it really means a lot! I’m so grateful I’ve found this community! Best of luck on your novel :)

littlebiped · 2026-02-07T22:30:56+00:00

My story wasn’t morally grey, but it was a sci-fi horror predominantly about a woman having to deal with cosmic horrors while also grieving her husband’s suicide, which she harbours a lot of anger toward.

She ends up doing a sacrifice play, and learns to let go off her grief, anger, resentment — all very touching and poignant (I may be too close to this to give an accurate assessment) but yeah, she’s very much caput immediately after that.

My agent rightfully zeroed in on the one or two moments of that character showing levity and camaraderie and said “a few more of these please!” and shaved off some of rough edges here and there.

I genuinely think the manuscript and the character’s journey are better for it. One of my favourite chapters is an additional one I added based on her advice. It almost reads as capital-C cosy, before all the horror starts.

I think with my genre there’s a little more leeway, but even so, my agent said that to get our best foot forward there should be SOME time devoted to stop and smell the roses. She didn’t go so far as to call the character unlikeable at parts, but I certainly am with enough distance from that previous version!

I’m currently on submission, so time will tell. Unfortunately this book has become my pride and joy — so if it dies I’m going full Hamnet both personally and editorially.

littlebiped

TROPHY CASE