My pathway to publication: In praise of editorial assessments

This industry is a notoriously tough nut to crack.  

On the road to publication, I had many conversations with myself that went a little something like this:

NEG: ‘I have this story I wrote. I think it’s maybe quite nice. I think I’d like to try to get it published.’

NEG: But I’ve never published before. And I don’t have an agent. And publishers don’t want to see work unless the writer’s been published before. Or unless they have an agent.

NEG: But how am I meant to get published unless a publisher looks at my work?

NEG: You won’t get published unless a publisher looks at your work.

NEG: So, how do I get a publisher to look at my work?

NEG: You need to get published first. 

Cue dramatic music and existential dread and crying into pillows.

Getting your work in front of the gatekeepers of the industry can be a challenge. But there are ways to do it, and do it you must, if you hope to build a career. Because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, how gripping and insightful your text, or how luminous your illustrations: if publishers never clap eyes on your work, your work will never be published. (NB I’m talking specifically about traditional publishing here, as opposed to self-publishing, which is of course a valid option but not one that I myself have pursued or know much about).

I’m sure the roadblock of publisher access prevents the work of many talented creators from seeing the light of day. This being the case, I wanted to share the route I took on my path to publication. I really can’t overstate the significance of this route in progressing my career. It lifted the boom gates, and waved me through to open road. It offered a detour around the slush pile, with all its echoing silence. It put miles on the odometer on the road to Kidlit Mountain. And in less metaphorical and more concrete terms, it allowed me to forge relationships with various publishers who now invite my submissions. And it led to my first (and subsequent) publishing contracts with Scholastic Press.

Listen close, traveller. The route I took was this: editorial assessments.

For the uninitiated, an editorial assessment is the opportunity, for a fee, to have an editor from a reputable publishing house (or in some cases a freelance editor or an agent) review one or more of your texts, and offer you feedback from the perspective of an industry professional. In theory, they will help illuminate where your text succeeds, where it does not, and how you can improve it.

Let me set the scene. The year is 2021. It’s been a dreary season of lockdown. I have forgotten how to socialize. And yet, I’m hungry to connect with other KidLit Creators. I scour online for opportunities to do so, and stumble upon something called the CYA All Stars Conference, run out of Brisbane, but held online, like so much human interaction at this particular historical juncture. The conference (which is stellar) offers Editorial Assessments. These sound like an excellent plan, given the texts I’ve submitted so hopefully via open submissions appear to have been sucked into a silent chasm of darkness, from which nothing shall return. I sign up for a handful of assessments with strategically chosen publishers, giddy at the prospect of not only chatting with actual human adults, but with actual human adults who know a thing or two about KidLit and may be able to point me in the right direction vis a vis my own KidLit endeavours.   

The day of the assessments arrive, and I meet with Clare Hallifax (then Publisher for Omnibus Books, an imprint of Scholastic Australia). She speaks to me kindly. Respectfully, like a peer. I respectfully pick her brains on all things KidLit. She expresses enthusiasm for both my texts, and invites me to resubmit, once I have made a few suggested changes. We exchange email addresses. And the outcome, after all was said and done? Scholastic Press acquired both picture book texts submitted for the assessment, as well as a third text, which I submitted later.  

A word of gentle advice: I would caution against unrealistic expectations of receiving a publishing contract off the back of an editorial assessment. You probably won’t. I usually don’t. But what an assessment will do, is get you in the game. It will put your work in front of the folks who can potentially take it off your computer and out into the world. And in an industry where access to the gatekeepers is fairly tightly guarded, this has the potential to kickstart your career. As an aside, I have also found editorial assessments to be delightful and encouraging and challenging and enlightening for so many reasons unrelated to career tangibles like book deals. I’ll explore this further in another post.

So, that was my pathway. But suffice to say, if you are a KidLit creator, feeling like every road’s a dead end, I see you. Try to keep at it. Try to take heart. Focus on the work, and make it sing. Find the joy in the process, and the work will nourish you, regardless of publication outcome. And once you’ve done all that, you might consider the possibility of booking an editorial assessment, strategically, with a publisher you admire. I hope it will be worth your while.

Postscript: the cost of editorial assessments usually range from around $90-$200. Over the past few years, I’ve made provision for a couple of assessments in my annual writing budget. Recognising that they are, in fact, an investment in the business I am seeking to build helps me stomach the cost, somehow.