Hannah Selinger sold a novel!

The behind the scenes on her journey

On the first Inkwell of 2025, Hannah Selinger writes about selling her new novel (go Hannah!!!!). We hope you follow along with our writing journeys and wisdom by subscribing. Paid subscribers get access to our library of classes and we’ll answer your burning writing and freelancing questions.

I'm commandeering this week's newsletter to share some of my own news--and to talk about the publishing world in a very specific way. On Wednesday, I was able to announce publicly some news that I've held close to the vest since November, which is that I've recently sold my debut novel, VALLEY OF THE MOMS, to my existing publisher, Little, Brown. I wanted to take this opportunity to share a little bit about my experience writing, submitting, and, finally, selling this book.

Many of you already know that my debut memoir, CELLAR RAT: MY LIFE IN THE RESTAURANT UNDERBELLY, will be published this March (if you haven't pre-ordered it yet, I encourage you to do that here, because advance orders are really helpful for authors!). When I signed that book deal, in January of 2023, I had about a year to turn the manuscript in. That gave me a little bit of leeway between having written the book and my existing advance, which continues to pay out in stages as I run through the publishing process.

I wasn't ready to work on a second nonfiction project (I have an option clause in my book contract that specifically addresses nonfiction work), but I did have an idea for a novel, so I scheduled a meeting early last February to discuss what writing a book that was a complete genre-flip might look like. My agents supported me and encouraged me to deliver a few chapters to them before diving in too deep. When they liked what they saw, they greenlit the project.

By the end of March, I had a full-length work (debut novels run about 80K to 100K, and mine was on the lower end of that). My agents and I went through extensive developmental edits for just over a month, finally going out on submission to 28 editors the at the start of May. We got immediate and enthusiastic feedback from Big 5 editors: complimentary rejections, so-called "R&Rs" (these are requests to "revise and resubmit")... but no requests for editor calls. And no offers. My own editor, at Little, Brown, wrote back with a long editorial letter saying that she was dismayed that she hadn't gotten an exclusive. She made suggestions about the book and said that if it did not sell, she wanted an exclusive on it, assuming I'd be willing to come to the table on some changes.

And the summer dragged on! I took the notes I had received on the R&Rs, as well as my own editor's feedback, and spent six weeks revising the manuscript with my agents. We resent the book out to all the editors who had not yet responded. By now, it was mid-July, and publishing was on a four-day work week, and responses were getting harder and harder to come by. At Labor Day, I reached out to my agents and decided to pull the manuscript from consideration, despite the fact that it was still out to 10 editors. I wanted to go exclusive.

So that's exactly what we did. The first week of September, we sent the book out--the new manuscript this time--exclusively to my editor at Little, Brown. She was just getting into her busy season, with Frankfurt and a summer backlog. Every few weeks, she emailed my agents to assure them that the book was still on her radar. Pretty soon, it was in second reads. Then, in November, she asked my agents if she could have a call with me--and only me. No agents, no distractions.

On the call, she asked me about the book, and about a few changes that she saw and that she wanted to make sure I'd be comfortable with. I wasn't sure what I was allowed to ask (there are a lot of rules in publishing), so I delicately asked her what the next steps would be and she told me she just had to come up with an offer. A price. In other words, the book had already cleared acquisitions.

That was a Friday. The following Tuesday, my agents reached out with the offer.

VALLEY OF THE MOMS was a departure for me. My previous book sold in six weeks, at auction, with Christmas and New Year's baked in. This novel took six months to sell. In retrospect, I should have gone to my own publisher first, but I wasn't sure what the market looked like, or what the demand could be like for a book like mine.

What I learned, though, is that the relationship you have with your editor is the most valuable asset you can take from any of it. Were it not for mine, my book would likely still be languishing in an inbox somewhere, and it's not because this book is any worse than any other young novel; it's just because books need the right architecture of support to get them across the finish line. They need cheerleaders!

Well. Don't we all.