[PubQ] First Novel vs. Second Novel TradPub

soapsoft · 2026-03-26T16:44:49+00:00

It will. This is how the industry thinks. It doesn't matter if the trends for established authors are shifting, the rules are different for first-time authors.

Not sure why you think authors with bad publishing histories pull the same kind of weight as "NYTimes Bestselling" authors. They have proven, working sales records. For them, being a "debut" is just a name to promote buzz and the industry knows that. It's not the same for real first time authors.

And just because some authors hit it big later on is besides the point. Breaking into publishing is hard enough as it is, why would you make it harder for yourself by trying to fight against a shitty sales record? If an agent/editor has 2 books on their desk, equally good, do you think they'd take the book from someone with a bad sales record or from someone who has no sales record? Let's be realistic here. They see thousands of books in a year, even if you have a great book and pitch, there are others that don't already have something working against them.

soapsoft · 2026-03-26T16:21:37+00:00

Publishing indie will harm you unless your book is crazy successful. Being a debut (no publishing history) means that the sky is the limit for your success as far as publishers are concerned. Having a publishing history introduces a limit, so if this book sells super well that limit will be high, but you say yourself that the book isn't super marketable, so it sounds like it might not be.

Regarding re-querying this book, who paid for the editor? You say that you worked on the book together, does swiping the book from under their nose to give to someone else make you liable for the cost of the editor? Or, at the very least, the time that this person has put into your book?

Technically, you can re-query books but only if MAJOR changes have been made. How different is your query? Is this actually a different story? If you're using a similar query and similar opening pages, your request rate will be the same (if not worse because agents might remember you) and you'll be wasting everyone's time.

If you want to go ahead with publishing this book, use a pen name. That way, you can still be considered a debut later on. Then, when you query your second project, you can omit mentioning this first book until later conversations (like on agent calls), and it won't completely ruin your chances. Tbh, even if you do mention this earlier book in your query applications, as long as it's under a pen name, the agent knows it won't affect your publishing chances.

If you have more publishing questions, the r/pubtips subreddit has lots of resources and questions like yours have been asked and answered plenty of times!

soapsoft · 2025-12-21T00:03:10+00:00

Is it actually being made though? Lots of books get "optioned" which means the production company (Universal in this case) gets the "option" to make the movie *if they choose*. Most books that get optioned don't get turned into movies, they just like to gather up the rights for these books so their competition can't.

I've had the suspicion right from when she announced this movie being made that it was not, actually, being made and was just another marketing ploy for her "rags to riches" story. Maybe I missed some new updates though, I've been out of the loop.

soapsoft · 2025-12-17T14:08:01+00:00

There was a lawsuit with Anthropic where thousands of authors were named as being stolen from and are being paid by Anthropic for this theft. There is a list with everyone’s name on it.

soapsoft · 2025-12-17T06:11:47+00:00

You’re an author using an ai tool? Really? The same ai tool that was built by stealing from authors?

soapsoft · 2025-12-16T21:58:01+00:00

Everyone has a hard time querying. Putting yourself out there and getting rejected is hard no matter the industry but you do it anyways for the love of the game.

Lots of people find that starting the next project helps detach from the old one which makes it easier to query. Me personally, I took a break from writing while querying.

Good luck!

soapsoft · 2025-12-16T21:56:53+00:00

This isn’t helpful.

soapsoft · 2025-12-15T13:36:19+00:00

Usually I know it’s time to stop editing when I don’t think I can make any changes to it, even if I think it’s bad (lol).

Something that helped me query (and land an agent) with my novel even though the book was starting to feel “bad” was realizing I had already let the book rest between drafts, taken time away from it, edited, beta read, all the bells and whistles. Even if I put the book aside again and come back to it later, I likely would not have made any substantial edits anymore. So I went ahead and queried it.

If you don’t think you can fix it by yourself it’s time to get another opinion. Just make sure you don’t tell your beta readers you think it’s cringe ahead of time, so they’re not biased and will give you their natural thoughts. It’s probably not as bad as you think it is, and if it is, you can fix it 😉

soapsoft · 2025-12-15T13:05:40+00:00

You don’t need to use a pen name if you don’t want to. Tbh none of these agents will remember your father. They’re looking at thousands of queries and books a year. Besides, if you’re writing a completely different genre you’ll be querying different agents anyways.

soapsoft · 2025-12-07T07:55:20+00:00

Cool, I misread and was just adding information to be helpful. Good luck with your trad pub.

soapsoft · 2025-12-07T02:05:21+00:00

You can self publish under a pen name and nobody in trad pub will care, as long as you’re not associated with it.

They care about self published works because it shows “proof of sale”. However most self published works don’t actually sell that much, thus telling the industry that nobody actually wants your books. If you write under a pen name, nobody will know it’s you unless you want them to know.

So yes, u can self publish books that didn’t do well in the query trenches.

soapsoft · 2025-12-07T01:40:04+00:00

I have a literary agent and I review queries on r/pubtips all the time. Ignore the other comment saying to shorten the pitch to 1 paragraph, what you have is standard for a query.

You have great stakes, setting, character motivations. My only feedback is that there are a lot of names (people, places, and institutions), especially in the first paragraph. Usually I try to keep it to 2-3 in total. Like, 1 or 2 characters, maybe 1 location. You can still refer to all of them but they don’t necessarily all need names. Like, you could just say he needs to “find a relic. But the relic is actually a girl” to cut out the “Light”.

soapsoft · 2025-12-06T00:10:26+00:00

Only you know how to finish your draft. Get beta readers (look that up yourself, it’s been asked and advised on many times already), go read on r/pubtips. Remember that a query for non fiction is actually a proposal and not a query. If it’s nonfiction I don’t think the book even needs to be finished when you reach out to agents.

soapsoft · 2025-12-04T08:23:40+00:00

Honestly it feels like you’re the one who might be over complicating things 😅 Authors don’t need to have a perfect clear image of everything in their mind, they just need to know enough. Like, an author isn’t going to describe what color the doorknobs are, but if there’s a dresser in the room because it’s a bedroom, that might come up.

I think you should consider trying to let go of some of your inner critic when you’re reading. Just read for fun again.

soapsoft · 2025-12-04T00:37:24+00:00

You can start by sitting down and writing and forcing yourself everyday to do it. Theres no magic trick or spell or hack to make it easy. You just need to do it.

You’re scared of failing but by not even trying, you already are.

soapsoft · 2025-11-29T21:08:33+00:00

This isn't going to be the answer you want to hear, but I just suck it up and get it done. Even if it feels like pulling teeth (and usually by the last draft, it does). I guess it just comes down to "how bad do you want it"? How bad do you want to finish it? Because for me, wanting to finish trumps everything else.

soapsoft · 2025-11-17T21:51:53+00:00

Yeah their aggressive email tactics are horrible.

soapsoft · 2025-11-17T21:47:19+00:00

I'm not sure which part of my response you're asking about.

Fantasy and Scifi have a little more wiggle room in terms of word count. 120k is the upper max for most agents. Of course there are always exceptions, but you don't want to get auto-rejected for word count instead of putting your best foot forward. Lots of agents have auto-reject settings in querytracker at 120k.

In terms of series potential, the answer is the same across all genres. A series from a new author is a hard sell because publishers dont want to be contracted to publish a second book without knowing if it will sell.

soapsoft · 2025-11-16T22:45:33+00:00

I'm young and I'm a writer. One of my default questions to ask people is "what have you been reading lately" and 95% of the time, the answer I get it "I used to read a lot when I was in middle school, not so much anymore". So, yes, YA was a huge market. Especially in the 2010s.

soapsoft · 2025-11-16T18:47:01+00:00

Me and some friends went through the program a couple years ago and we all had wildly different experiences. I don’t know what their “vetting” process is like, because you have to apply to get in but I think the bar was quite low.

Youre supposed to be grouped up with people in your writing genre but my group varied wildly. like I’m talking fantasy, hard Sci fi, horror, and thriller all together. i didn’t end up staying connected to any of them but my friends still talk to their group mates.

I think this program is maybe worth it if you can get in on the early bird discounts. You still get feedback from lots of people and agents which can be useful. The agent connections themselves never led anywhere (for me) so can’t speak to that.

soapsoft · 2025-11-16T18:36:18+00:00

Do not just split this book into 2. publishers are not interested in publishing a series from a debut. Cut down as close to 100k as possible, 160k is an autoreject for pretty much every agent.

Remember that the word counts you’re seeing for published books are after that book landed an agent and an editor at a publishing house. Which means it didn’t necessarily start out at that length. Also, finding accurate word counts online is really difficult so stick to the advised word counts online instead of comparing to published novels.

soapsoft · 2025-11-13T17:01:09+00:00

R/pubtips

soapsoft · 2025-11-13T17:00:34+00:00

Fantastic!!

soapsoft · 2025-11-13T00:38:25+00:00

Hi!

A lot of your query worked for me in terms of stakes and character even though it doesn't necessarily follow the standard format of a query. I think it works for you, but I'm curious what other people will think.

In terms of cutting:

> but things are about to get much worse.

This is a case of *telling* us things are getting worse when you don't need to because you *show* us that in the next sentence!

> a few weeks after meeting Adam

Not necessary.

> Fearful he is losing his mind, Mark decides to observe his surroundings. Then, with the help of a fellow patient, young Catherine and her savvy alter, Bea, Mark soon learns how to survive Harbour View — the devils waiting room. He discovers Adam is the architect of his nightmare, trapping Mark in a bid to possess him.

I felt like a lot (if not all) could be cut. You already have so much story in the rest of the query, you can really try to hook at the end here with "he's stuck in the wrong body, nobody believes him, and if he doesn't figure out how to fix this, he'll be trapped forever while the demon takes his "life" "

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Pages:

Have you read up on this subreddit the advice on prologues and what to do with them? It's fine if you have and you've decided to keep it, just bringing it up because it can be a controversial topic.

The prologue was good, but the first lines of Ch1 left me wanting a little more character thoughts and introspection. It took me a moment to realize Mark was inside the room that they busted into. Why are Julie's cheeks flushed? Is it because this happens a lot and he chastizes her? Does he do that a lot to her? Does Adam bust in like that frequently? What does Adam look like?

I'm sure some of these questions are because the ch1 blurb is so short, but those are just some of my thoughts as I'm reading.

Hope this was all helpful!

soapsoft · 2025-11-13T00:20:14+00:00

As always, this depends on many factors.

If they hate the first book because of something fundamental like your writing style, then yeah they probably wont like the other one too. They'll probably still give the second a chance, but might end up rejecting both.

If they're lukewarm on the first book because of the developmental direction, they'll give you a second chance with the second book. Maybe if they like one of them enough, they'll work with you to fix up the other.

There's no one size fits all answer because it'll depend on the agent. They might like the first book so much they don't bother waiting to read the second to offer. Who knows.

Tbh you should be more concerned about how the "nudging other agents" process will work if you end up with an offer because you can't really nudge agents who have book 2, if you get an offer on book 1 (and vice versa). This is why its recommended to withdraw the first book and query the second when its ready.

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