Episode 5: A Modest Proposal

A peek behind the scenes at how we sold our books 📚🎉

Welcome to the Pub Dates newsletter! We’re so glad you’re here.

This newsletter is released as a companion to each podcast episode, and we use it to share the visual elements of our discussion — from mood boards to design sketches, from photos to secret giveaways just for subscribers.

In episode five, we answered a listener question about selling our books to our publishers — here’s what Norah asked:

I’m so excited for the podcast! I was curious about your querying processes for your 2023 releases. Amie, since you’ve already published a bunch of novels, did you still have to write a query-ish letter for your agent/editor/whoever, or did you just send off an excited, less formal email about your idea? And Kate, did you go through the traditional querying process since this is your first YA novel, or was it different because you already know a lot of people in the industry?

In our answer, we talked about the process of selling our books — how that worked for Kate as a first-timer, and for Amie, selling again to a familiar editor — and we promised a few peeks at our proposals as well.

First up, here’s part of the cover of Amie’s proposal for The Isles of the Gods—you’ll see a few images that help capture the mood of the book, the title, and a few lines to describe it. She’s listing a few of the things she loves about the book, so that people who love those same things will know immediately that this story is for them.

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Next up, we have a page from Kate’s proposal—she wanted to demonstrate the immersive world she’d built, so she didn’t just describe her magic system. She shared the vibe as well, with images of her cocktails, and a hand-written note. (Remember, you can click on any of these images to see a large version.)

Images can be really powerful — it’s one thing for an author to imagine a place, but another to convey what it’s like. And there are lots of people inside a publisher who need to know what you’re thinking, beyond just your editor. Images can help teams from sales, marketing, publicity, design and beyond picture what your book might look like, and allow that idea to be shared in-house without every single person needing to read the first draft of the book.

Here’s a teaser Amie created for some of the non-nautical locations in The Isles of the Gods — the sea got a whole page to itself, of course. She wanted to convey the rich settings that the characters will explore — the colours, the scents, the sounds, the vibe.

And of course a pitch or proposal can include character biographies — we both did this, and below we’ve included the bio that Kate created for Mathilde. You can see that she’s conveying a mix of personality and plot, both with her words and the picture she’s chosen.

Does something in here spark your curiosity? We’d love to know!

And that’s all for this episode — next episode we have a huge treat for you. See you then!