Five Things I’ve Learned Querying ‘Hannah Cole’

Each book is a different adventure. Here’s what I’ve picked up this time around.

Photo by Chris Blonk on Unsplash

2016 was the year dedicated to querying my first novel, Somehow You’re Sitting Here. As you might imagine for someone sending out their first novel, their baby, the whole experience was kind of traumatic — especially when it ended in failure.

This is the part where I have to caveat it wasn’t an extreme failure. Most people don’t get representation for the first book they’ve written. That first book doesn’t sale. Mine was no exception. But I did receive some very positive rejections, rejections that my writing community said were nothing short of stunning.

If you know nothing about me, know this: I am not a the glass is half full kind of guy. All I saw were rejections and failures.

All of that made me really apprehensive when it came time to send out my next book, The Unbreaking of Hannah Cole. But, if you want to get your book professionally published, that’s what you have to do.

And so I did.

The process is still ongoing. Queries are out, pages are out, and people are reading. The response has been good for what is, I imagine, a fairly controversial and sort of niche contemporary YA book. The big active…