Authors: How long did it take to get the YES?

Generally long enough to write a second book, and a third, and a fourth...

It averages out at around three months from submission to contract offer.

It took me years (decades!) to get the idea/experience/skills for the right book. Once I did:

Started it summer 2006
Finished it summer 2007; started querying
Signed with Donald Maass Agency in Sept, I think. Maybe October.
Pre-empt from Random House in January or February 2008

There are many routes to success. I look forward to seeing others' stats!

Emily Winslow said:

It took me years (decades!) to get the idea/experience/skills for the right book. Once I did:


There are many routes to success. I look forward to seeing others' stats!

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This. It took me twelve years to finally get the right combination of writing skills and ideas to get a publishable book.

Once I had that, it took 2 months to get an agent, five more months after I signed before it went on submission, 2 months to get a firm offer from a publisher, then a pub date scheduled 16 months after that.

Countless years to write something publishable. Five months of querying to get an agent. (We supposedly go out on sub in a few weeks.)

If we're counting 'years until you write something publishable', then dear God...I win so far.

32.

Hmmm agent signed me in less than 24 hours.
Signed in March.
Sent out in June.
UK market - 4 weeks before an offer.
Sent out in July.
American market - 2 weeks and went into auction.

A Reaper's Tale (subbed to e-pub) - 6 days
Strand (subbed direct to editor of above e-pub) - 6 days
Solus (querying agents) - Coming up to 2 months so far.

10 months from query to contract. I assume you're talking about novels, of course. Short stories tend to be pretty quick.

Three books, about 90 queries, over 3-4 years. Sometimes it takes more than one, and for me the third book was the charm. Queried 9 agents with it, and received 4 requests. One request became a referral to an agent who read it and offered three days later. A month and a half later, it went on sub to publishers; within a month, we had three offers and it sold at auction.

The longest was six months, the shortest, three days. I'd say on average it takes about two months.

Carlene

It took me three months to land an agent, based on 30 queries. Once I had an agent, it took 10 months to land a publisher.

That was nonfiction, biography, though, and the market is much quirkier now.

scarletpeaches said:

If we're counting 'years until you write something publishable', then dear God...I win so far.

32.

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Well, if we go that route... I beat ya! I wrote my first books when I was 8, so that makes it 39 years till I got published.

However, in my efforts to seriously pursue publishing it took about 3 years to practice on one book. The next one I wrote got an agent within days, and went to auction within 2 weeks of agent acceptance, got a publisher next day. Published a year later.

Wrote the 1st one... a year to write, a year to query & land the 1st one.
Wrote the 2nd one... 19 days for 1st draft, 2 months to edit & 6 weeks after querying to land 2nd one.
No agent though. I went straight to publishers. YMMV

aruna said:

Well, if we go that route... I beat ya! I wrote my first books when I was 8, so that makes it 39 years till I got published.

However, in my efforts to seriously pursue publishing it took about 3 years to practice on one book. The next one I wrote got an agent within days, and went to auction within 2 weeks of agent acceptance, got a publisher next day. Published a year later.

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Experiences like yours give me hope.

I started writing stories (bad ones) when I was big enough to hold a pencil, so that would have been round about four or five. Learned to type a couple of years after that.

Always wrote. Always. It's my default setting. Didn't write anything of publishable standard 'til I was 32, though. I subbed LTC to an agent, they said no thanks. I was going to continue the agent route, then thought, "No. Build a name for yourself in the epub market first," and sold it to the first publisher I contacted.

When it comes to agents...I haven't subbed to one in a year. I've decided to keep my erotica for epubs and my agent-bait novel will be in a completely different genre. Here's to 2011!

Maybe this time next year I'll be able to quote your post and say "Me too," aruna!

It took me about three weeks of querying before I got a yes from an agent. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to sell it (through no fault of hers - it was just a really weird book, and difficult to sell) and the "yes" from the publisher never came. I just started querying my second book. I sent out my query to only two agents, who are essentially my dream agents working at my dream agencies. I got two yes-es literally right away - these yes-es were for a full manuscript, which is probably quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I'm easily excitable, so this is very much a big deal to me.

2 years of querying to get an agent, a year for the agent to sell the book, and 3 years before it hit shelves. Whew.

scarletpeaches said:

When it comes to agents...I haven't subbed to one in a year. I've decided to keep my erotica for epubs and my agent-bait novel will be in a completely different genre. Here's to 2011!

Maybe this time next year I'll be able to quote your post and say "Me too," aruna!

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I raise my glass to that!

Well, I sent my first piece of fiction out with a query at the age of 17 and that was 39 years ago.

I didn't write a novel length work until I was 38. I queried it, but it (rightly) never went anywhere. Wrote the second novel at the age of 39, found an agent for it a few days after turning 40 and about three months into my querying process, and she sold it at auction three weeks after she first sent it out. So based on that you could say it took me 23 years from first send-out to published (for fiction--I had a lot of nonfiction stuff published starting at age 38). But for novel length works alone, it was two years and two novels.

I never have gotten any of my short fiction published, so for that it's been 39 years and counting, though I haven't submitted anything in years. I guess I do better writing long.

Beth

First novel (written seventeen years ago): didn't sell.

Second novel (written fifteen years ago): didn't sell.

Third novel (written ten years ago): didn't sell.

Fourth novel (written eight years ago): didn't sell.

(There may or may not be a fifth novel in there somewhere; I'm not sure.)

Then I focused on screenplays for about seven years. Optioned one script three times, did a (non-WGA) work-for-hire gig, optioned another script. Then got tired of screenplays, started hating the business, felt creatively stifled, decided to get back to novels before I started to hate writing and not just the industry I was trying to work in.

Fifth novel (written between August and November 2008): submitted 9 December 2008; contracted 8 January 2009. So about a month.

Sixth novel (written between October 2008 and May 2009): submitted 22 May 2009; contracted on 19 June 2009. So, again, about a month.

Seventh novel was already contracted as part of a two-book deal: submitted on 2 April this year; accepted on 13 April.

About a week for the agent. About the same time from the editor. I sold three short stories and a novel within a couple of months after I started writing. It would have been faster, but I had to write the novel after the agent said yes.

Eternity.

Which is another way of saying it never happened.

It's hard to say how long it took me to write the first novel I queried with. It was an old idea that I tore up and redid over the course of about a year. It only took me two and a half weeks of querying to get an agent, we went on submission about three months after that, and I am still waiting for that 'yes' from a publisher... more than ten months later. Feels a lot longer, though.