The Auction, the Pre-empt, the Book Deal, the TV/film Agents, the Announcement

SHANGHAILANDERS will publish spring/summer 2024 with Spiegel & Grau

As many of you know, I signed with a literary agent in November and finished edits on my novel with her in January, in preparation for submission to editors.

So much of this final part of the book selling process - submissions, auction, foreign rights - is out of the author’s hands. Actually, I was grateful that my family holiday fell on the same date my agent took the book out on submission. Those who have been on vacation with two kids under four know that there’s barely time to check email. So, if you can swing it, I highly recommend having two babies back to back and then taking them out on a trip just as your agent goes on submission. You won’t have time for anxiety. (:

It was within the week that Stephanie messaged me to say that she had signs of interest and that she would begin setting up meetings for when I was back in Shanghai. Also, that we already had an offer for a foreign language translation on the table.

When I read that I was blown away. To be honest, I think more than anything else this says so much about the expertise and abilities of my agent Stephanie and my foreign rights agent Allison. My agents were the ones who curated the list of editors (and book scouts, and co-agents) to approach, who have cultivated those relationships, who pitched the book in the right way. They are absolute superstars, and I feel so blessed everyday that I get to be a part of the Trellis family.

Over the next few days, as I wrestled my kids into snow suits and carried skis and plastic boots and ducked out of the way of treacherous poles swinging at eye level when my three year old insisted on being a big girl, I saw the meeting invites trickle in to my inbox. Yes, yes, yes. I accept, I accept! By the end of the week I was booked through the next.

Editor meetings are, like agent meetings, just pure pleasure. People telling you why they love your book, why you should choose to work with them, what their vision for your success looks like. I loved meeting with these editors, who all had such smart readings and many good suggestions. By the end of the week, I was just elated, as well as exhausted (again, that NY/Shanghai time difference was a killer). And it had become clear that there would be an auction. A deadline was set for early the next week.

On the day of the auction I woke up to some unexpected news. From London, my co-agent Sue emailed to let me know that there had been a pre-empt ahead of the UK auction (set to happen at the end of the week). It was with a publisher and editor I was so excited about, Dialogue Books with Hannah Chukwu. We went ahead and accepted that deal, just hours before the US auction began.

The US auction was won by Spiegel & Grau, with Joey McGarvey editing. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was at this outcome. I had been a little anxious going into the auction. It was out of my control. What would happen if after auction I was somehow disappointed with the outcome? But I felt not even a twinge of that; I was completely overjoyed. In fact, my husband took a photo of me that night, nearly paralyzed with happiness, a goofy smile plastered on my face. (No, I won’t be sharing that intense and insane looking photo here.)

Over the past two weeks, I’ve also had meetings with film and tv rights agents, something I never had thought would happen so soon. (I hadn’t realized that agents submit books to film/tv agents at the same time as they submit to publishers.) The conversations were about feature versus limited series versus series, about adaptation, about actors to attach. This part of the process is completely opaque to me, and in reality, it is probably very far away from happening if at all. However, I feel so lucky to now be working with a team at United Talent Agency.

These past five and a half weeks (we went on submission January 19) have been a dream. I have been working toward this for so long and I can hardly believe it’s happening. I know that this stage that I’m in - preparing my debut, floating in a bubble of optimism and happiness - won’t ever happen again. After the book comes out there will be criticism and disappointment, expectation and challenge. Things will become messier and real and tangled. The stage will be set for book #2. But for now, there is a purity and energy to this moment that I am soaking up and loving, enjoying while it lasts.