How I Almost Didn't Get My Book Deal
A story of stubborn resilience.
I began writing my book when I was in between jobs.
It was 2015, one of my freelance-writing contracts had just ended and I was in the middle of the interview process for my dream job (which I ended up getting and have worked at since). A vegan of three years, I had been running a digital vegan fashion magazine for a couple of years and learned so much along the way. At the time, bookshops were filling up with books on veganism - really beautiful, well-written books. But they were all about food. Not a single one brought up the non-dietary aspects of living a vegan lifestyle. And that’s where I came in.
My aim was to create a beautiful, aspirational coffee-table book on vegan fashion and lifestyle. I started putting down all my newfound expertise on paper (or, well, in an OpenOffice document). I devised chapters, booked interviews with experts, planned an outline. Every day, between prepping for my interviews and taking long walks in the park (it was a particularly sunny April), I found some time to write. I also studied ways to sell a non-fiction book - my goal was publication.
The way you get a non-fiction book out into bookshops is by first writing a proposal - a very labour-intensive, detailed document that outlines why the market needs your book, why you are the best person to write it, what the market for your topic looks like, and even specifics like where it would sit on bookstore shelves and ideas on how to market it. Then you also add your first three chapters. This proposal is then to be sent to literary agents, and if you get one of them to take you on (a huge accomplishment in itself) then they have to pitch your book to publishers. When they succeed in landing you a publisher, voilà - you have a book deal.
When I first started sending my proposal around to agents back in 2015, few of them reacted or responded, and many didn't really understand what I was talking about. To put it simply, my book was ahead of its time, and as such, my proposal was pretty much dead in the water.
But I hung in there and kept writing. I was getting this book out into the world, even if it meant crowdfunding to self-publish, hell, even if it meant going to the library, printing off the pages and stapling them together. I was determined. And so I persisted with the completion of my manuscript over the following few years. In the meantime, I had started my dream job and been thrown into the deep end in a steep learning curve. Outside of that, I was running a digital magazine, and if all of that wasn’t enough, I also moved from London to Brighton during those years. Looking back, I'm not sure how I did it all. But the fact is that, towards early 2018, the manuscript was finished.
I tried agents again - and this time, I got some interest almost immediately.
In 2018, the vegan trend was in full swing. Plant-based restaurants were launching, fashion brands were experimenting with vegan materials, more and more beauty companies proclaimed themselves cruelty-free, and the supermarkets were filling up with new vegan ranges. I had always known that this time would come - the world was ready for my book.
I signed the contract with my agent after a pleasant first meeting in London. Looking at their client list, I was blown away. Me among all these competent, renowned authors? The dream I'd had since I was a child was taking form, and I was here for the ride.
Together, we re-worked my proposal massively. It was invaluable to me to have my agent's input into what makes a good non-fiction proposal. There were so many things, big and small, that I learned from working with them. And when they started pitching the project to publishers, I had high hopes. To me, it was a matter of which publisher I’d end up signing with, not if I’d get one at all. In my mind, once you had an agent, the hard bit was over. If someone in the book industry believed in me and my project, then surely others would too?
Turns out, things were not quite so easy.
The great thing about having an agent is that they send you all the feedback from publishers on your project. So I got to partake in the deluge of critique that came in from the country’s top publishing houses. And the criticisms were numerous and varied. This was not a book, it read more like a magazine. The information in this will date and so it will not sell beyond a certain timeframe. The market is too small. But the most common reason for rejection was that I was not a “platform author” - someone with a big online following - and so would not be able to sell my book.
This was a massive source of frustration for me. I had no desire to be a public figure, “grow my personal brand” or be an influencer. I just wanted to do my writing and share my message with the world. Also, and this was perhaps an even bigger gripe of mine, I did not have the skills to grow my following. I’ve always defended online influencers when people have attacked them for “doing nothing all day” - growing a dedicated following is not nothing. It’s far from easy, otherwise many more people would be doing it. I don’t have that skill set, and it brought me immense dismay that this might be standing between me and the publication of my book.
Many of these worries were dissipated when my agent and I got a meeting with a big publishing house. I went in hopeful and happy, the day was filled with good vibes. The people at the publishing house seemed genuinely interested in my book, and my agent was quite certain that an offer was forthcoming. I spent all day waiting for The Call, or The Email. My husband and I even went for a drink to celebrate (lesson learned: leave celebrations for after you’ve secured the thing you’re celebrating). But the day - and the following few days - went by without the phone ringing. I checked in with my agent and they told me that we had to be patient, the offer was coming.
The call finally came on a Friday afternoon. But it was not the one I - or my agent - was expecting.
I remember crumbling to my bedroom floor and crying. The tears just kept coming, months of hope and anticipating leaving my body in hot streams down my cheeks. My husband came in and, without saying anything, just sat on the floor and held me.
That weekend I ate chips and cried. I drank wine and cried. I sat with a friend in a café and cried into my decaf oat cappuccino. I couldn’t sleep. And I decided to get off social media for a while, as I was certain (and am still certain) that it was my lack of a following that torpedoed my book deal.
But then I got back up, dusted myself off, and asked my agent, “what do we do now?”
My agent kept sending my book out to more publishers. But the responses we got were lukewarm. At a certain point, they let me know that they had come to the end of the road. They’d tried everything and the book had not sold.
I parted ways with my agent amicably. I am still so grateful to them for the work they did and the time they invested in me and my project. Had it not been for them, I might not have believed in my book in the way that was necessary for what came next.
I tried other agents, but I never trusted anyone to take on my book again. Receiving advice that I saw as wildly wrong put me off - one agent told me to take all the photos out of my proposal as that made the book less expensive to print. But I was making a beautiful coffee-table book, I argued. Without the visuals, it didn’t have that aspirational factor. I never found anyone who shared my vision, so I sent my project out to publishers myself. This of course meant that I had to limit myself to only those publishers who accepted un-agented proposals. There are only a handful of publishers like that on the UK market today (aside from scammy vanity publishers who want you to pay to publish your book), and I was really making sure I hit all of them.
Long story short, persistence pays off. After months of contacting publishers on my own, hearing a million times that my following was too small, and getting rejected even by those who wanted you to crowdfund for publication, I landed not one but TWO offers for my book. I still remember waking up to the email from the publisher I ended up choosing, Murdoch Books. More crying followed, but this time, it was a different type of tears. I went for a celebration, again. But it was real this time.
Working with Murdoch on my project was inspiring and eye-opening. My team, from editing and design to marketing, was stellar. I learned so much about how putting a book together works and had so much fun in the process. When I received my box of author copies, more tears followed. Holding your own book in your hands for the first time - there are few things like it. Shortly after that moment, the US rights for my book were sold to Simon & Schuster imprint Tiller Press, which meant that I was now sharing a publishing house with the likes of Stephen King, Fredrik Backman, and Dave Eggers - some of my favourite authors.
My most surreal moment ever was seeing my book in the library. This was a couple of weeks before the planned publication date - I was just browsing around in the library, which is an all-time favourite hobby of mine, when I saw it on the “New Books” shelf in the non-fiction department. It felt like my legs were going to crumble under me. I called my mum immediately.
The launch party for Vegan Style was held in London on a warm July evening. Almost all the invitees showed up. I gave a little speech. There were vegan cupcakes and tiny bottles of sparkling wine. I wore my favourite dress, which has since fallen to pieces but I still keep it in a suitcase as a memory. After the party, we went to nearby vegan restaurant Mildred’s and had burgers. It’s still one of the happiest days of my life, up there with my wedding.
My book has been out for five years now - and my life didn’t change after it came out. I still live in the same flat, work at the same job, hang out with the same people. All my joys and problems from my pre-author life are still the same. My financial status hasn’t changed and I’m not famous in any way. A second book deal has not materialised. I used part of my book advance to travel to Los Angeles and Las Vegas with my husband, which was very cool, however. And every time I spot Vegan Style in a bookshop, or am tagged in social media posts by readers, my heart still skips a beat.
I wanted to share my story to remind that it is possible to get a book published with no money, no connections, no big social media following, no previous fame or status, no model looks, at 36 years old and without an agent. Does it happen all the time? Definitely not. But my story is not unique. There are a few of us out there making our dreams come true thanks to nothing but stubborn resilience. If you think that’s you and you truly believe in your project, keep going. Fall down seven times, send your proposal back out eight. At the very least, you’ll know you gave it your very best shot. And at best? You’ll spot your book in the library and will call your mum crying. The good kind of tears.
All photos by David Camilli
Thank you for sharing this, and well done on your persistence! I can't imagine how demoralising it must have been until the very end, I'm not sure I could have coped myself!
I recently read Stephen King's On Writing and he said this: he pinned every single rejection letter he had received to his wall with a nail, “By the time I was fourteen, the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it."
Persistence is indeed the key!