Snickerdoodles, how does a book get published, and early morning national TV from my living room

Very excited that someday, maybe in 2021, someone who isn't me will do my hair

It’s Friday again, which is a surprise to me, mostly because for most of the day yesterday I thought it was Friday. But then, that’s probably because yesterday I woke up at 4 am to be on The Today Show — you can view that segment here! — and then at 10:30, I crashed back into sleep, full face of makeup still on, and slept for an hour and a half, and I think when I woke up I thought it was a brand new day. I was on to recommend books, with the delightful Isaac Fitzgerald — I was so thrilled to see him when we were first on screen together I started waving manically — and at that link you can see the books both Isaac and I recommended. But don’t worry, I’ll give you mine here too: You Should See Me In a Crown, by Leah Johnson, which I’ve raved about here before, The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, by Audre Lorde, a new collection of her work, edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay, The Art of Ramona Quimby, by Anna Katz, a gorgeous coffee table book with art and text from the Ramona books, and Ways to Make Sunshine, by Renee Watson, an incredibly charming middle grade novel about a girl named Ryan Hart and her loving, struggling, joyful family. I loved all of these books!

This morning, there was a great and terrible piece in the New York Times called Why is Publishing So White? with lots of data about books and publishing for the last seventy years. Great because the information is very useful, terrible because of how little change there’s been since 1950; one of the statistics: among the books they surveyed 5% of the fiction published since 1950 was by people of color. The books they surveyed were not all books, but they are very specific in the piece about which books they surveyed and why. I do not run a publishing house, so I have no power to change any of that, but what I can do is try to give people more information about publishing, because it can be a very confusing industry to outsiders (and, honestly, to lots of insiders, there is a LOT I don’t know). There are a lot of people who want to get a book published, but don’t know what to do or how to get there, so I’ll try to give some info about that here! And to be clear — I do not think it’s the fault of Black people and people of color or think any lack of knowledge that has led to this extreme discrepancy in publishing! I’m doing this because it’s one of the ways I feel like I can help writers who see things like this and get discouraged. A question I get asked frequently is “How does a book get published?” so I’ll go through the major steps here. A corollary to that question is often “Why does it take so long for a book to get published?” and I think these answers might explain some of that. Another caveat: this is just about traditional publication, and for fiction, and for a major publishing house, these are not universal answers!

The first step is to write the book, the whole thing, and to edit, and revise it. People often ask if they have to write the whole book before getting anywhere else in the process, and the answer is almost always yes. It is very rare for a debut author to get a book deal without a complete, edited manuscript. When I say edited, that does not mean you have to hire an editor — go through some revision yourself first, but do try to get other eyes on the book; find other writers through online or offline writing groups, Facebook groups, writing classes, etc, and trade your work with them!

The next step, once your book is ready, is to find an agent. I wrote about finding an agent here in this newsletter — I thought it was forever ago, but it turns out it was at just about exactly this time last year, which tells you how weird time has been in 2020. I think that newsletter still says everything I’d say about finding an agent, but I’ll add one thing about having an agent. People often ask if you have to get an agent, and while it is possible to get published without one (some publishing houses accept unagented manuscripts) I would never ever want to, and for so many reasons. First of all, selling your book is really only one small part of your agent’s job, there is so so much more to it. Especially at first, a lot of their job is to translate publishing to you — I understood like…maybe half of my first publishing contract, and I’d been a lawyer for over ten years when I got it. I wouldn’t have been able to negotiate that myself, and I was grateful for my agent telling me what it all meant. And she still translates for me and advocates for me (and does thousands of other invaluable things for me) today.

Wait, no, I’ll add a second thing about having an agent, that I think people should keep in mind during the agent search: your agent will hopefully be a partner in your career for many years to come, so you’re looking for someone who you think you can work well with. You don’t want someone who you’ll feel like you’re bothering when you have a question, or that they’re talking down to you when they answer. You want someone who is going to be honest and fair with you, but who you feel comfortable asking questions to anytime. I’ve been doing this for four years now (I got the deal for The Wedding Date in October of 2016), and I ask my agent questions constantly!

Okay, now you have an agent — your agent will likely have you do some edits to your manuscript, and then once those are done, you go on submission. Your agent sends the book to editors, and then…you wait. It’s sort of just like querying, except you’re another step removed from it. You can usually choose whether you want your agent to tell you about rejections, or if you just want to only hear good news; I always wanted to know, but I know lots of people who don’t. Rejections suck, but they’re a part of this business. I also found it helpful in the week I got two rejections back to back, because (though it was crushing!) they gave exactly the opposite reasons for rejecting the book, which made it so clear how subjective this whole business is. A note about the timeline, here: there are lots of stories about people getting an agent in a week and then turning around and getting a publishing deal right afterwards, and those are great stories, but not the norm! For me it took five months from my first query to signing with my agent, and then almost exactly six months between when we went on submission and when I got the deal. I was a ball of anxiety during that time! But also, let me tell you something about publishing in general — there is a lot of waiting! Things often take forever! I’m frequently a ball of anxiety, but have gotten better at that! (My agent, if she is reading this, just let out a cackle, but look…I have gotten better, okay?)

And now you have a book deal! And you have more waiting! One thing that I did not know at ALL before doing this was how long it can take from the “Yay, you have a book deal!” phone call, to getting the contract in your email. For me, it’s taken anywhere from five to ten months every time. The first time I thought something was wrong, but no, it’s normal, that’s just how this can go. (FYI, you get the first check after signing the contract). But now that you have the deal, you also start working on edits — your editor will send you an editorial letter, with notes about changes she wants you to make to the book, so you do those. Sometimes you will then have a second round of edits to do, either more developmental edits or line edits, so you’ll do those and send them back. Then you’ll get copy edits, where a copyeditor marks up your manuscript and you make any necessary changes because of their feedback and send it back. Then you get pass pages, which are when you get the book in pdf form (sometimes people get a printed out version of this, but I’ve always gotten it as a pdf; I imagine that everything has been pdf this year), and you read through the whole thing and make any other necessary changes, generally typos or other corrections like that.

And then the book goes to the printer! Which in 2020 has been a real challenge — if you wonder why it’s taken so long to get some books, it’s because the supply chain has a lot of broken links this year, and so there have been a ton of printing problems and delays (if you were one of the people who got a copy of Party of Two that had missing pages, this is why! Please ask the retailer you got it from for a new copy, they will be happy to oblige!).

And then your book comes out, usually somewhere between 12 to 18 months after you got the deal! There is a LOT I skipped in here, but I hope that’s all helpful in giving people some background, and I’ll try to do things like this again. Also! I often answer publishing questions on my Instagram stories, and I have my answers all saved in my Instagram highlights. My agency, Root Literary, has been answering a bunch of publishing questions over the past few days on their Instagram story, and their answers are so good, so give them a follow if you’re interested in this!

And now for snickerdoodles! This recipe comes from Sarah Kieffer’s new book, 100 Cookies, which I’ve finally gotten a copy of, and it’s as good as I thought it would be. It’s on backorder lots of places, but I ordered from my local bookstore, and they got it to me after a little wait, so be patient! Those printing problems I mentioned above are even worse for things like cookbooks that use full color printing, because there are fewer places that do that, so that’s why so many cookbooks have been backordered this year. This is a recipe for pan banging snickerdoodles, and it’s similar to the pan banging chocolate chip cookies recipe, and is similarly great. Recipe (and my notes) below.

Snickerdoodles

2 cups (284 g) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg*
1 cup (2 sticks or 227 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups (350 g) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line your sheet pan with aluminum foil, dull side up (she says it like this in the recipe; it took me a while to figure out what side is the dull side, if it takes you a while too, you are not alone). In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, and nutmeg (*I did not have nutmeg and so did not use it here: I think it would be great in this recipe but also these cookies were excellent without it). In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, or a big bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute in a stand mixer. Add 1 1/2 cups (300 g) of the sugar, and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Turn down to low speed, and add the egg and vanilla. When combined, add the flour mixture, and mix on low until combined.

Mix together the remaining 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar and the cinnamon (I also added a sprinkle of salt here, because I like that) in a small bowl. Form the dough into 3 ounce (85 g) balls. One recipe note: she says this recipe makes 12 cookies, but each of my dough balls was exactly 85 grams and that gave me 10 cookies, just fyi. Roll each ball in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. One other note from me: I made and baked three of these cookies last night, and three this morning — last night I rolled all of the dough into balls, and then rolled only three of them in the cinnamon-sugar and baked them, the rest of the dough balls went into the fridge. When I did it last night, I only rolled the dough in the cinnamon-sugar once, but this morning, I rolled all three once, and then all three a second time, and that gave me a heavier cinnamon-sugar layer on the cookies, so I recommend that step if you want that.

Place 3-4 cookies an equal distance apart on the sheet pan (I only did 3 cookies at a time, these cookies spread a LOT, so you want a lot of space), and put in the preheated oven. Bake 8 minutes; until the dough balls have flattened, but are puffed some in the middle. Lift up the sheet pan and let it drop down against the oven rack; the edges will wrinkle out and the center will fall. After two minutes, bang the cookies back down again. Repeat two more times — the total baking time for these cookies for me was 15 minutes, so I did a bang at 8 minutes, at 10 minutes, at 12 minutes, at 14 minutes, and then took them out at 15 minutes. The centers won’t look cooked all the way, that’s okay!

Take the pan out of the oven and let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes — don’t try to move them before then, or they’ll fall apart. After ten minutes, move them to a rack, and let them cool all the way. Eat these cookies yourself, or drop them on the doorstep of anyone who needs a cookie, which is probably lot of people these days.

If you read all of this, thank you! Have a restful weekend, everyone! Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating!

Jasmine