✨20 Publishing Lessons That Would Have Saved Me YEARS
Plus: Three literary agents looking for new clients!
Welcome new subscribers! I’m the author of The Marriage Vendetta (HarperCollins 2025) and The Village (April 2027). It took me more than a decade of rejection to get my first book deal and I’m sharing all the insider tips I learned on the road to publication.
Hey fellow writer,
I’m still bunkering down with my book 2 edits, looking and feeling slightly crazed, but the end is in sight!
I went a bit extremely hermit-y in the last few months of 2025 in order to get my completed manuscript to my publishers by the January 1st deadline. It involved a lot of late nights and 5am starts, and I’m finding now that I have very little left in the tank, but once these edits are done and my book is accepted 🤞, I’m going to reward myself as I always do when I hit a big milestone — by buying myself six books!🎉 So that’s keeping me motivated.
(Does it matter that I already have shelves full of unread books looking at me right now? No. it does not. I like choices, people!)
I’m really tempted by two of Emma Gannon’s books, A Year of Nothing and A Creative Compass, and I’m also dying to get my hands on The Mad Wife by Meagan Church (that cover!) and Maria Semple’s new book Go Gently which is out in April. Oh, and I NEED Vera Kurian’s Never Saw Me Coming.
Please send on recommendations for what my sixth book should be!
Right so, here’s what we’ve got in today’s newsletter:
✨ 20 lessons my almost 20-year journey to publication taught me: these are the lessons I WISH I could go back and tell my younger self. They would have saved me years.
✨ Three literary agents actively seeking new clients!
What Almost Two Decades Taught Me About Getting a Book Deal
I’ve been genuinely touched this week by the response this little note 👇 has been getting on Substack. It’s a pretty stark (but hopefully ultimately uplifting!) summary of just how long it took me to get a traditional book deal for my novel. It was also a bit harrowing to summarise my life like this. Like, was I MAD? (Yes. The answer is yes.)
If I’d known how long it would take to get a book deal, would I have even started? Yes, without a doubt. But I’m kicking myself looking back now, because I can see the many ways I could have speeded things up for myself.
I could have shaved years off that timeline. I made so many avoidable mistakes.
So if I had a time machine and could go back and shake my 26-year-old self, here’s what I’d say:
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