Agents and Editors Aren’t Always Right About Market Potential

Whenever I teach on nonfiction book proposals, I open up the conversation by talking about market potential ($) and how to convince agents or editors that your project has it.

Some of the things that don’t indicate market potential:

• The opinion of your family or friends (unless they’ve done the market research themselves)
• The opinion of the freelance editor you hired
• The opinion of your beta readers or critique partners
• The opinion of your colleagues

And finally, the one that frustrates everyone:

• The opinion of literary agents and editors in traditional publishing—people who probably know something about market potential

But I think we all realize (let’s hope) that agents and editors are not all-knowing gods, and can’t necessarily know about market demand in every book category.

And that’s exactly why book proposals exist: to make the business case that persuades agents and editors that there is in fact a market for your work.

Unfortunately, authors can be susceptible to taking feedback from agents/editors as gospel or the final word on the market potential for their work. That is a mistake. Their feedback can be useful, of course, to the extent it demonstrates where you might have failed to make your business case, or it might reveal something you didn’t know about the market. (For example: if you’re a white woman pitching a book full of recipes all about grain bowls, you’ve got an uphill battle because that market is saturated.)

On Oct. 15, 2020 (I keep very good records), I had a consultation with established author Bella DePaulo. She had an agent who was not at all enthusiastic about her next project-in-progress about the power and freedom of living single. Instead, this agent convinced DePaulo to write a different book, one the agent thought would be “big.” Unfortunately, even though that book was published, it was not successful.

So, by the time of our conversation, DePaulo was actively deciding whether to find another agent, or if it would be smarter to simply self-publish her book on singlehood.

It’s pretty rare that I outright dissuade clients from self-publishing if they seem well-suited for it, and DePaulo certainly was. But after I evaluated her materials and her platform, I believed a traditional publisher could be found if she wanted to invest time into securing another agent. Here’s why:

• DePaulo had done a TEDx talk, “What No One Ever Told You About People Who Are Single,” viewed more than 1 million times.
• DePaulo’s work on single people has been featured in the New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and more. DePaulo was referred to in an Atlantic article about single ladies as “America’s foremost thinker and writer on the single experience.”
• DePaulo herself has written for the Washington Post, New York Times, Atlantic, etc.
• DePaulo had been writing the Living Single blog for Psychology Today since 2008. Some of her individual blog posts had views in the six figures each month.
• DePaulo started a Facebook group, the Community of Single People, with about 5,000 people from around the world.
• A Pew survey conducted in 2019 found that half of solo single people do not want a romantic relationship or even a date.

DePaulo is an expert on the topic of single people, has a solid platform, and plenty of connections and opportunities to spread the word about the book. Plus she has evidence there is interest in the topic. Given that she preferred a traditional publisher for the project, I advised her to stick with the querying process.

What we soon discovered is that DePaulo’s sales record was making her a pariah—namely, the poor performance of the very book she’d been convinced to write by the agent who didn’t want her any longer. She was able to find at least one agent who agreed to help, but without any enthusiasm. DePaulo passed on that offer.

Then, a law professor who knows about DePaulo’s work offered to make a referral to Bridget Matzie of Aevitas. It seemed like a long shot, since Matzie represents some high-profile authors and has sold many books at auction. Much to DePaulo’s surprise, Matzie was enthusiastic and (after working on the proposal together at length), Single at Heart was sent to 30 editors at the very top publishers.

A few publishers responded with 1-sentence “not for us” rejections, and a few more never responded, but the others seemed to take the proposal quite seriously, and many described what they liked in some detail. One said it was the best proposal he had seen in a long time, but he just couldn’t take a chance because of the sales of DePaulo’s last book. There was even a Zoom meeting with one editor who was very enthusiastic and who already had buy-in from several colleagues. But her boss said absolutely not, because of the sales track record. (If it were DePaulo’s first book, the answer would probably be different.)

After more revisions to the proposal, it was sent to another 29 editors. DePaulo got two Zoom meetings out of that group, including one with an editor who was herself single at heart. She loved the proposal and had all sorts of ideas for the book, including an idea for a follow-up. But she got shot down by others at the imprint, again because of the sales track record.

In the end, DePaulo ended up with only one offer, from a new-ish independent publisher, Apollo. It wasn’t much of an offer. No advance, just profit sharing. She took it.

Single at Heart releases today (Dec. 5, 2023), and DePaulo sent me this update:

As this post was being prepared for publication, DePaulo alerted me that AARP mentioned her book in a book news roundup. (For anyone unaware: the AARP readership is massive.)

Additionally, Single at Heart will be translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean. And I bet there will be more.

It’s obviously frustrating to see publishers so resolutely focused on an author’s past sales, especially in the nonfiction realm where I consider it an unreliable predictor of future success. It also feels increasingly irrelevant, mostly reminiscent of the heyday of Barnes & Noble, when their New York buyers would base their buy-in on the author’s previous sales in store.

These days, consider:

• Barnes & Noble’s ordering is no longer centralized and publishers can’t pay for merchandising.
• More than 60 percent of books today are bought online.
• An author’s ability to reach their readership directly can greatly transform and advance over time—as it did with DePaulo.

But sure, if publishers assume from the start they will not support a book adequately and rely on the author’s name alone to drive sales, by all means use Bookscan sales figures from many years ago as the guiding light for what to publish.

I guess, at the very least, I appreciate that publishers were honest about the reason for the rejection. But it does not speak well or bode well for their future, assuming it’s indicative of the direction of their decision making today. It’s possible to make meaningful, data-informed decisions in publishing that support strong acquisitions. To focus on an author’s past sales alone leaves out most of the picture.