How I got my book deal
by Hayden Stone
In writing, like in most things I do, I make my own path. Sometimes that means I’m just wandering in the weeds. Sometimes it takes me somewhere cool and unexpected. It’s not intentional—it just seems to work out that way. So, my publishing journey hasn’t been a conventional linear progression in the usual query—find agent—go on submission route.
Not to say that I haven’t tried that route or that there’s anything wrong with it. In fact, I did a big famous mentorship program, revised a book, and then queried it hoping to do just that. But this book deal happened kind of before and kind of after the mentorship—and with a little novella, not the book I thought would get me published.
Intrigued? Confused? So was I. Let’s go!
After I applied for said mentorship, and still waiting to hear about mentee picks, I took part in #DVpit, a Twitter pitch contest for underrepresented writers, which was a great opportunity for me as a queer trans writer. At the time, I had a gay romance novella called When London Snow Falls that had grown out out of a short story that I figured I would self publish. But with nothing to lose and low expectations, because I hadn’t ever gotten anywhere with #PitMad, I took part in #DVpit pitching my novella.
Much to my surprise, I had interest from several publishers. Honestly, it took a little while to let that sink in, because here was this little novella (and I mean little, about 25,000 words at the time) that was getting all this interest. It wasn’t even a full-length novel, like my other story for the mentorship. I was excited. Quickly, I sent off queries to the interested publishers.
Four days later (!) I enthusiastically heard back from a senior editor at one of the publishers, Entangled, who loved my voice in the novella, and really wanted to work with me on this and any other books I had like it. The only problem was they couldn’t just publish a short novella. Did I have other novellas? Could I expand the story to novel-length?
At about the same time, I got into the mentorship program for my other novel (in a different genre). I couldn’t accept an offer of publication and remain in the internship. My would-be editor ended up waiting about four months till the internship ended so that I could participate. We agreed I would expand the novella to a short novel for one of their category romance imprints, and also that I would submit a couple of pitches for other standalone books to take to acquisitions.
I ended up with a two-book deal as an unagented writer for When London Snow Falls, and an untitled second book sold on pitch in May 2020, which would turn out to be An Unexpected Kind of Love. As an unagented writer, I had a literary lawyer review my contract for my book deal. Before too long, the contract was signed.
The two books were standalone queer romances in the same story world, set in London’s Soho. The whole thing was shocking to me, not only because it was my first book deal, but it was also early days of the pandemic and the world was upside down. Everything felt surreal.
That summer, I expanded the novella to novel length. Then When London Snow Falls grew again to a full-length novel when we decided to lean into the romcom space. This meant a change of imprints, but it was all worth it in the end. Also in 2020, I wrote the draft for An Unexpected Kind of Love, which ended up being the book that Entangled decided to lead with.
An Unexpected Kind of Love was published in August 2021, and a couple of months after that, an audiobook deal came along with Tantor Media for this book and When London Snow Falls, which was also terribly exciting. I always dreamt of having a book of mine narrated, and it was so cool to hear my book come to life months later.
As for the novel that I thought would lead me to an agent and a publishing deal, I decided it needed further revisions after some querying. But it’s not wasted effort, awaiting rewrites.
And that agent I had hoped for? Well, that’s another story, but I’ve recently signed with her, and I’m very excited to have her support my writing career.
To recap, I went the pitch contest—query publisher—book deal—publish books—get an agent route. I ended up skipping submission for now, which is the usual route books take to find a publisher, as pitched by a literary agent to publishers.
My book deal took some luck and some graft—and always, writing and revising.