Book Update: Securing an agent & polishing the proposal
A mid-2024 update on the progress of my forthcoming book on late-diagnosed autism in women, and the the reasons it doesn't happen sooner.
Welcome to The Late Diagnosed Diaries, the bi-weekly-ish musings of a late-discovered autistic author and speaker, former journalist, and eternally curious human, featuring educational explanations, critical explorations, and vulnerable realizations, all seasoned with a teeny little dash of feminist rage.
I’ve mentioned in a few of my posts here that I’ve been in the process of researching a book that aligns with the topic of this blog: why so many women go undiagnosed until adulthood, and what that means for those of us who were missed.
But I’m overdue to give an update on the process, and the sheer volume of updates also explains for my recent absence.
I spent early April putting a ton of work into the initial proposal for the book, in preparation to query agents to represent the book. Once I was comfortable with the state of the proposal, it was time to identify the agents who I thought would be most interested in representing the book.
To do this, I spent a lot of mid-April on Manuscript Wishlist, the industry’s go-to site to figure out which agents are currently accepting queries, and what type of proposals they are most interested in representing. I reviewed 100+ agent profiles, genres and topics they are most interested in, the genres and topics they are NOT interested in, their professional experience, the books they’ve successfully sold to publishers in the past, and their preferred process for formally submitting a query to them.)
Once I had a list of 20 or so agents for my first round of queries, I signed up for QueryTracker, which is the system nearly all book agents use for formally receiving and responding to book queries. I decided to split the process into phases, imagining that I might get feedback on my first round of queries that I could incorporate into subsequent submissions.
For my first round in late April, I submitted 7 queries, essentially asking 7 agents if they were interested in seeing my full proposal. Three said yes within the first 2 weeks, and I sent them the proposal. Two of those agents made offers the following week, and I spent the next week researching and interviewing to see which would be the best fit for me and for the book itself.
At the end of May, I signed on for representation by the incredible Jessica Faust, the owner and president of BookEnds Literary Agency. We spent early June on proposal revisions and additions (including adding an entire full chapter), in preparation for the proposal going out to publishers.
In the final week of June, Jessica began sending the polished proposal to publishers to see who was interested in taking the project on!
As I’ve come to understand, my query process was exceptionally fast compared to what’s typical, so this next part may take a bit longer… So now we wait!
I am so excited to see you are pursuing a book. This subject definitely needs to be addressed.