[Discussion] Our process getting an agent and landing a book deal

**Background**

Our non-fiction book (after what will be ~4 years from the very start) is officially set to publish in March 2027 after we signed with an agent and publisher last year.

The two of us authors are best friends, who randomly said one day while hammocking, “hey, we should write a book together.” Honestly, we never really had a plan for what would come after finishing a manuscript (if we ever even finished one) because we never considered publishing a serious possibility. We initially viewed the project as a hobby, and thought that we could just post the finished product somewhere online and call it a day.

As we neared the end of our draft, we (one of us more reluctantly than the other) decided that we’d give the traditional query process a chance just to see what would happen. But both agreed that if it didn’t work out, we’d happily move on. We assembled a list of ~50 possible agents and started our email blast.

**(Rough) Timeline**

Mid 2023: conceived initial idea and began outlining

Mid/late 2023: start of researching and writing

Jan 2025: completed draft manuscript and book proposal, compiled potential agents

Late Feb 2025: sent roughly 50 queries via email and QueryTracker with an annoying number of variations (some wanted proposals, some didn’t; some wanted first 30 pages, some wanted 90)

Late Feb/early Mar 2025: received interest from two agents; one decided to pass after asking for more material, thankfully the other offered representation

Mar-Aug 2025: worked with our agent to revise our manuscript and book proposal before reaching out to publishers

Aug-Sep 2025: our agent contacted ~20 publishers; we received an offer from two, declined one and accepted the other

Nov 2025: signed official contract with publisher

Nov 2025-Apr 2026: made substantial additions/edits to manuscript to reach agreed-upon word count before final manuscript was due

Apr 2026-Mar 2027: currently working with the publisher’s editors and publicists to get everything completed before launch

Mar 2027: scheduled publishing date!

**Random Thoughts**

Obviously, we’re ecstatic - and still in a bit of shock! Never thought this is where we’d end up a few years later after that day hammocking in the park.

It’s pretty funny to look back at our initial drafts, even the version we used for querying, and see just how much it changed. We nearly doubled it to meet the agreed-upon word count set by our publisher. That was an absolutely crazy few weeks! But it is such a better manuscript now, and we couldn’t be prouder.

Our agent has been fantastic, and was more hands on with the initial editing than what maybe some other agents provide. She saw promise in our idea, and used her years of experience in editing and being a literary agent to guide it into something worth publishing. Without her assistance, there’s no way a publisher would have picked us up.

Our publishing team has been equally amazing. We’re now in the thick of creating our marketing plan, which is completely new to the two of us industry outsiders. Making money from the book has never been our objective, but we don’t want to let the team that took a chance on us down, so we’re taking this very seriously.

Speaking of money, our only costs since the very start have been hiring an artist for the interior images and buying the domain name for our website, both of which we did after signing our contract. Oh and of course the countless number of hours spent on every conceivable angle of this project.

That’s probably enough rambling…we are excited to be able to share our experience!

Mark and Brandon
www.SpyTailsBook.com