Publishing is a Dream. Sometimes It’s Also a $5,000 Advance and a Migraine

The truth behind getting a book deal.

Photo by Vadim Mityushin on Unsplash

Note: This essay is based on my publishing experience from 2005–2017. Other authors will have different experiences, so take my words as insight — not gospel.

Aspiring writers dream of the book deal like it’s a fever dream: bookstore windows, name in lights, seal-clapping fans, Marion Ettlinger breeze-blown headshots. You’re an author. You’ve arrived. But most writers don’t get that version of the dream — or if they do, it comes with a price: rejection, debt, years of waiting, and a second career as your own marketing and sales rep like they’re Willy Loman with a suitcase packed with unsold dreams.

Here’s the thing — nobody tells you that the biggest reward isn’t the deal — it’s finishing the book and still wanting to write another one.

The Myth of the Deal

When aspiring writers imagine their first book deal they picture an Ari Gold-type character slamming down phones in the midst of publisher negotiations. My client won’t edit a line for less than a quarter million! When it reality it can take months, even years, to find the right agent because an agent relationship is much like a marriage and the books are your proud offspring. No one talks about the work in finding an agent for whom your work resonates because mass-blasting cover letters isn’t the vibe.

Instead, you scour dozens of websites like Publishers Marketplace or the acknowledgments section of books similar to yours to compile a hit list. You research their websites and socials to determine if they’re even accepting new clients and the genres of work they represent. Then there’s the work of the query letter and sample chapters — all agents seek a morsel, a taste, not the entire meal dumped in their laps. And while you can ask an AI bot to craft your cover letter remember, every word you write represents you, your unique voice, your point-of-view. AI can be a brilliant reader, but it shouldn’t be your ghostwriter. The first impression should sound like you — not like everyone else who hit ‘generate.’

I secured my first agent in 2005. Although I had a fancy Columbia MFA degree and stories published in literary journals, finding the right partner took work. There’s the courting phase — will this person have time for no-name me or does it seem like it would take a lottery win for my calls to be returned? Do they get me, my work, and are they willing to help shape my manuscript for submission or do they dictate their idea of me which feels like donning an outfit that doesn’t quite fit.

It’s easy to cleave to the first yes because it’s validating, you’re becoming an author — it’s all happening! But do you want to choose the wrong partner and end up in divorce court, relationship in tatters?

When future authors picture the process of publisher submission they dream of tier one imprints, fat advances, sprawling marketing campaigns and the easy life. But much like finding an agent, finding the right publishing house, imprint (i.e., a division of the house), and editor takes time. Your agent will compile their A, B, and C-list to match your manuscript with the right editor. It could be a mix of big houses, big imprints and indie publishers. And the invariable rejections (and reasons, if you’re lucky) will flow in.

The biggest burn was when my agent submitted my second book, a debut novel, to publishers. The experimental, non-linear style was markedly different from my memoir and the territory less lucrative (a female serial killer in 2015 wasn’t the mass norm — which inspired many female editors to remark: people don’t want to see women bakers as murderers, which caused me to shout back to my agent have these people seen one episode of The First 48?) You will want to hunt down the editors, scream in their faces about how they don’t get it, get you, but this is more the time to scream into pillows and group chats. You may have to edit your manuscript based on the feedback. Or it might take dozens of publishers to find the right fit. Or, even worse still, you might not find a match at all.

But let’s say you secure a deal. Those fat advances are rare and the reality is your advance (translation: taxable income) will likely be divided into portions paid out over a minimum of two years. For both of my books, I received a portion on contract sign, manuscript delivery, and publishing date — both of which took two years. Publishers are behemoths and books are slated into seasons depending on sales potential (think: big blockbuster films experience their greatest success during summer months while more dramatic films perform well in the fall and winter months).

This is probably the moment when you realize publishing is a business of numbers and you aren’t the only cute new kid on the block. Fanning yourself with your advance money? More like showing up to your 9-to-5 because you still have bills to pay.

The advance for my second book — despite my first earning out and glowing reviews? $1,000. Split across two years. Taxable. Pre-agent cut. That’s $425 a year if you’re lucky — and that’s if everything goes to plan. Often I joke my writing is an expensive hobby although it’s the only thing I was born to do.

But what you’re made for and what makes you money are often at war with one another and your rent, insurance, and student loan payments are always the victors. The spoils are holding your book in your hands because you’ve done what most haven’t — you’ve written a book and now its found its way out into the world. A noisy, competitive world where survival is Darwinian. And sometimes all that fanfare and confetti showered down on you when you signed your contract becomes tumbleweed in a barren desert.

I was proud of my second book because it was a truer reflection of my style and voice and I was grateful for it to have a place in the world even if it was with a smaller publisher, a meager advance. I was just happy. But I was also promised that my book would be the “big book” of the season with more marketing and publicity dollars behind it. And then my publisher left, my editor left, and the publicity department dodged my calls. Aside from a starred Kirkus review, my novel crawled out into the world and fell, head-first, into a void.

Still, I’m proud. Still, I’m grateful. Still, I keep writing.

The Emotional Cost

Finding an agent can feel like a full-time job — but unlike a job, your writing is a piece of you. And cold, cutting rejections hit like wounds in a constant state of dress. They don’t heal. They fester.

I’ve published two books. I’ve proven I can finish a manuscript and write a story that burrows beneath a reader’s skin. I’ve been writing for nearly four decades and it’s still work. It’s still hard because publishers change, trends and times change, and you change. The writer I was in 2008 when my first book was published and the one I am now is a chasm that widens with the passing of each year. I’m confident, assured, but different, strange. And the business of publishing doesn’t always love different and strange.

They don’t love writers who shirk social media, proclaiming a TikTok allergy. They want you hocking your wares while also being the artist that moves people. They want Substack numbers, follower counts to a point where it feels as if the marketing of you subsumes the artist that is you. There’s no longer a divide, a happy equilibrium, rather it’s you, Oliver Twist, holding your book in front of a camera. Hands quaking.

Nobody tells you that the work of promotion can feel like asking people to love you — and then watching them scroll past.

After the financial failure that was my second book, my agent and I fought. I’d started a terrible third book and didn’t know it, and now a coast separated us — most of our conversations were over email. The majority of authors he represented were successful non-fiction writers: biographers, business and political pundits.

Once the artist darling with features in USA Today and Vanity Fair, my sheen had dulled. We had devolved into the sort of marriage where the partners want different things. He wanted me to write traditional, bigger books and I wanted to write strange little stories. And much like a love-lost marriage, we slowly became strangers that exchanged barbs that weren’t so thinly veiled. We parted ways and while I miss his insight and editorial feedback (like most agents he was an editor in a former life) and regret how our relationship ended, our parting was inevitable.

The hardest part of the business of publishing isn’t always about the big break, it’s your resurrection after your light has dimmed. It’s the: I can still make you money even though my second book bombed. Friends introduced me to their fancy agents where I shopped the terrible third book and I was met with a chorus of we love your first book, we love you, but this book ain’t it.

Their words were a soundtrack that surrounded me, played on repeat, loud and persistent.

It would take me years to realize that even if you’re good you don’t always get what you want when you want it. But the love of writing keeps me going. Love is the hot poker pressed against my back. Write the third book, write a good book, be honest and humble about your history — realizing the only movement is forward.

The Real Joy

But let’s rewind the tape. Writing a book is tremendous — many talk about doing it but few do. And there’s magic in feeling a book in your hands. To see your name on its cover, to see the words you’ve composed, edited, butchered, resurrected and refined on a page. They’re alive and you can feel them beating like a pulpy heart held in your hands. To see the story that only you can tell ferreted out into the world and how that story moves even one matters. All of it is real and true and it matters.

The real joy is not in the fame or success, the trinkets that come after you write the book — the joy is in the writing, the completing, the pride for the words you created, the story you told, the book you made. The rest? Delicious icing.

Publishing a book won’t fix you. The fame, money, fanfare and confetti won’t make you whole and complete. It’s work, often tough dirty work, that blurs the line between artist and marketer, salesperson and storyteller.

But writing? Finishing the story that was a first line on a blank page? That’s everything.