The book deal didn't happen. Here's what comes next.

Hi, all!

Happy Tuesday.

Yesterday, this essay got published on the incredible Kathleen Schmidt’s Substack, Publishing Confidential, so I wanted to share it with you here. I’ve alluded to some of this in previous posts, but hopefully you can find some good nuggets of wisdom!

Happy reading…

Raise your hand if you want to land a seven-figure book deal, sell your movie rights, get picked for every major book club, and see your name at the top of that coveted New York Times bestseller list?

As an author of nine books, I know I do.

While miracles like this are possible (because we see them gracing our social media feeds what feels like every five seconds), for the typical writer, the road can feel a lot… bumpier, to say the least.

Maybe you’re someone who pours three years into a manuscript, signs with a great agent, and gets hyped up for submission. You have an agent! The rest is cake, right? The emails go out, and then you wait. And wait. And wait. The rejections roll in until there are only one or two editors left, and you are hinging your entire life’s purpose on just one person saying yes.

Or maybe you are an author who already has a book, but corporate consolidation happened, your editor left, your book didn’t sell enough, and suddenly your second book is getting rejected by the same house that was so excited to publish you in the first place.

Or, perhaps you are a first-time author hungry to see your books lining the bookshelves, preferably inside this decade. You know your book is different, that you were made for this.

All you need is a chance!

Wherever you are on your publishing journey, what do you do if the deal simply doesn’t come?

Even veteran authors are facing this issue right now. (Hi, it’s me! I was just dropped by my publisher for not having enough sales, despite 9 books under my belt and selling over 15,000 books in less than two months. Read all about it HERE.) Many publishers are consolidating into monoliths, AI is edging its way into most creative spaces, and authors are shaking awake to ask themselves:

“Is traditional publishing what I even want anymore?”

As a book doula guiding other authors through this hellish landscape, I hear one universal wish among all my clients: publication. But what so many of us fail to realize is this: As an author, you are in the driver’s seat. You are the one saying yes. It is your IP. Your career.

Yours, not theirs.

The legacy industry teaches us to treat a dead submission cycle like a funeral. We are expected to crawl into a corner, feel embarrassed, or start a completely new manuscript from scratch. If you weren’t chosen, then you must simply not be good enough, right?

Oh, so wrong.

This destructive mindset is costing writers their careers (sometimes before they even begin).

When a traditional book deal does not materialize, it means a corporation made a spreadsheet decision. It often has nothing to do with your talent or the viability of your story. This is a business after all, and all the stars have to align just so in order for everyone to say yes.

The good news?

When you’re “rejected,” you still own your intellectual property. You can still publish your book, even if the thought of indie publishing makes you quiver with overwhelm.

So if you find yourself facing the head-scratching decision of figuring out what to do next (and you’re not quite yet ready to indie publish), here are 7 incredible ways to pivot where you can actually make more money, have more say so, and own every part of your career.

Most authors assume that a dead submission means the book is dead. If your agent ran a standard round of submissions and hit a wall, your professional relationship with that specific manuscript needs a formal end date. Ask your agent for the full submission log, including the specific editor feedback. Formally agree to take that book off their plate. In doing so, you are taking back full control of your intellectual property so you can unbundle it, slice it into pieces, or sell it elsewhere without owing a commission on work they could not sell.

What to do next: Look closely at the feedback from those rejections. If editors loved the writing but hated the market viability of a 90,000-word novel, pull out your absolute best standalone chapter. Polish it as a self-contained piece of short fiction and target top-tier literary magazines like The Paris Review, Granta, or Tin House. If your novel addresses a specific cultural moment or niche subculture, write a compelling personal essay or op-ed, using your real life as the hook and mentioning your broader work.

Writers often focus on the Big Five and the top indie presses. Yet there is a whole ecosystem of highly specialized, niche micro-presses run by corporate entities, tech companies, or major trade associations. These places do not care about the standard New York bookstore distribution models. They buy books because the content matches their specific corporate or organizational mission. They often pay flat, high-dollar fees rather than advances, and they have built-in distribution networks that rival legacy publishers.

What to do next: Look beyond traditional publishing catalogs. For example, if you wrote a sci-fi novel dealing with climate tech, look at tech companies or environmental advocacy brands that fund creative projects. If you wrote historical fiction set during a specific medical breakthrough, look at major historical societies or foundation presses. Digital platforms like Radish or Wattpad Studios also act as non-traditional publishers, actively buying commercial fiction directly for their apps, bypassing the traditional brick-and-mortar pipeline entirely.

Instead of locking your manuscript in a digital drawer, put the first three chapters behind a paid tier on a platform like Substack. Frame it to your audience as a behind-the-scenes look at an unreleased project. Use the subscription revenue to fund your own professional copyeditor and cover designer. By doing this, you’re treating your book like a tech startup treats a software prototype. If two hundred people pay you five dollars a month to read your work in progress, you just bypassed the acquisition board entirely.

What to do next: Launch a serialized fiction section on your Substack. Post one chapter every two weeks specifically for your paid subscribers, turning the reading experience into a live, interactive book club. Invite your founding members to vote on minor plot points, character names, or cover designs in the comments. By the time the book is finished, you will have a highly engaged street team that is already financially and emotionally invested in helping you launch the full book to the public.

Everyone tries to sell the print book first, hoping for a movie or audio deal later. Flip the order. Pitch your manuscript directly to audio-first production companies or narrative podcast studios. The cost of producing a high-quality audio project is significantly lower than printing and shipping thousands of physical books. An audio-first deal gets your story into the market, generates immediate cash flow, and creates the exact platform data that traditional publishers require before they will take a risk on a physical printing press.

What to do next: Query audio-first publishers like Audible Originals, Podium Audio, or Realm. These companies specifically look for high-concept fiction that translates beautifully into voice performances. Adapt your first few chapters into an audio script format, hire a local voice actor on a platform like ACX or Fiverr to cut a stunning ten-minute sample, and pitch it as a multi-part narrative podcast series or an exclusive audio-first launch.

Find two or three authors in your exact genre who are also sitting on high-quality, unpublished manuscripts. Instead of self-publishing in total isolation, pool your resources to create a shared boutique imprint. Share the costs of a professional publicist, cross-promote to each other’s email lists, and launch your books as a curated seasonal catalog. You get the operational scale of a small traditional house while retaining 100% of your creative ownership.

What to do next: Reach out to your writing group or mutuals on social media who write in your exact sub-genre, whether that is cozy fantasy, psychological thrillers, or dark academia. Form a legal partnership or collective. Together, you can hire one top-tier freelance editor and a single high-end cover designer, split the cost of a comprehensive PR push, and approach book influencers on TikTok and Instagram as a cohesive, curated indie collective rather than a single lonely voice in the wilderness.

If the book’s narrative arc is what kept editors from buying it, break the manuscript down into individual assets. An unpublished 80,000-word nonfiction book, for example, can easily become a high-ticket six-week cohort course, a twenty-part paid newsletter series, or individual podcast concepts. An unpublished novel can be serialized or adapted into short fiction pieces for paid literary journals. Your manuscript is more than a single block of text. It can be a bundle of assets waiting to be monetized individually.

What to do next: Pull out the strongest narrative threads or character backstories. You can spin off a compelling side character’s journey into a self-contained novella to sell on Kindle Unlimited or give away as a reader magnet to build your newsletter. If your fiction involves deep worldbuilding or specialized historical research, package that research into premium educational content, craft workshops, or worldbuilding toolkits for other writers on platforms like Maven or Gumroad.

Take your book to the market entirely on your own terms using print-on-demand services. Study what successful indie authors are doing. Where do they sell? How do they show up? Where are their readers? Focus your entire energy on selling just one thousand copies to a highly concentrated, deeply passionate niche audience. Track your conversion rates, your open rates, and your reader reviews meticulously. See where and how you can sell consistently. Once you have hard, undeniable data proving that real humans are spending money on your work, take that data back to an agent or editor. (Or, in some cases, if your numbers are exceptional, publishers might come to you.) Because publishers are terrified of taking risks, they love buying proven revenue streams.

What to do next: Publish your book via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and IngramSpark to get it listed online. Instead of trying to market to the whole world, find the specific digital watering holes where your exact readers hang out, like specific subreddits, Discord servers, or Facebook groups. Run a highly targeted Kickstarter campaign to fund a gorgeous, limited-edition hardcover print run. Once you can show an agent or an editor that you sold out a physical print run and have a 4.8-star rating with hundreds of reviews, you can re-pitch the book for a traditional paperback distribution deal.

Wherever you are on your publishing journey, it is worth asking what you are actually chasing. Is it the validation of an executive in Manhattan, or is it the chance to get your story into the hands of a reader who really needs it? Traditional publishing doesn’t own a monopoly on connection anymore. The tools are right here, the paths are completely open, and the only person who gets to decide how your career moves forward is you.

Also, I’m going to be doing a fun podcast next week on my Substack with publishing superstar, Doug Seibold of Agate Publishing. Please send me any and all questions you’d love to ask a publisher—nothing is off limits! 👇👇👇