Is my novel submission-ready?
8 ways to judge whether your fiction manuscript is ready for an editor to read it
Ready? Set? Submit! Wait, am I really ready? How can I possibly know?
There’s nothing easy about deciding when your manuscript is ready to query to literary agents—nothing easy about it at all. In most cases, it will just be you, the manuscript, and perhaps some beta readers—you won’t generally have a literary professional on your side when you start querying. Your manuscript either finds an agent on the query circuit, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t find an agent, either there is something off with the timing or marketability of the book, or the problem is your manuscript—the writing isn’t quite there yet or it’s overlong and convoluted. It will be hard, at this stage of the process, to discern why your manuscript didn’t find an agent—often, you’ll just have to keep revising and querying in the relative dark. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: publishing isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes perseverance and heroic amounts of stamina (plus a smidgen of denial).
So deciding when a book is ready to go out on submission should be easier, right? (“Querying” is when you’re searching for literary agents to represent your project; “submission” is when your literary agent sends your book out to an editor [or editors] in hopes of landing a book deal.) At the submission level, you have an agent, the agent has read your material (and perhaps helped you revise it), and when the agent deems the manuscript ready, they’ll prepare a submission list of editors and start sending your manuscript out. Easy peasy, right? Nope. Whether this is a writer’s first time on submission or sixth (that’s my case), it’s never easy—or obvious—to judge whether an agented manuscript is ready for editors or needs just one more revision. I put that in italics because there’s no such thing as “one more revision.” Revision is a lifestyle. It never really ends.
An update from the front lines of my own novel revision: that’s exactly where I am right now; the “one more revision” stage. I’d hoped we would be ready for submission this December, but the gauntlet has come down from both my husband and my agent, the only people who read my early drafts: I need one more revision before we can go out. And it’s kind of a big revision, given that many items need to be addressed, streamlined, elevated, cut. Thankfully, there aren’t any structural changes this time around, but still I’m looking at 6 weeks worth of work minimum; possibly two months.
Am I upset that I have to revise this book again? On Friday, I have a little video coming to explain my feelings about this final revision. Spoiler alert: it involves my husband, a clipboard, and our couch. But until Friday when that video airs, I’ll share that I’m not upset, because I’m clear-eyed about what it takes to sell a novel to big five editors in this current market and I can see that my novel’s not quite there yet, according to my own criteria. Pray tell, what is this criteria? I’m glad you asked.
The eight elements your novel must have to stand a fighting chance with Big 5 editors in 2025
If you’ve followed my work for a while, you’ll know I publish happily with different partners: I have self-published (thanks, Troy Book Makers!), I’ve published with micro-presses (hi there, Cupboard Press); Indies (Tin House! Catapult!); I have published an Audible original (Jeff Bezos, it’s complicated); and I have novels out with Penguin Random House (Simon & Schuster and Putnam imprints, but both times with the same editor).
Before I start writing a new novel, I know whether I’m aiming for an indie partner or a big editor, and this time—with this novel—I’m going for the Big Five. I haven’t published with the big lads since 2017—I’ve done three indie books since then—so this could be something of a commercial relaunch for me and thus, the stakes are high. When we finally do go on submission, we’ll be submitting in an ultra competitive market during a Trump regime which—because of Trump’s daily histrionics and need for endless drama and attention—will mean even less room for book coverage and book reviews, which makes publishers less optimistic about securing coverage for new titles. Paper and ink remains expensive AF so publishers—the big ones—are going to prioritize their bottom lines over artfulness and craft. Editors are busier than ever, which means they have less time to edit, which means that even someone at my level needs to be turning in the tightest of tight manuscripts, which is why I have been revising this dang novel for nearly a year. These are general considerations for Big 5 publishing partners. Here are further considerations for people hoping to go on submission with novels, specifically, in the year ahead: