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Hi Bleeders!

I’m so excited to share my latest podcast interview with y’all. I came to know my guest, Emily J. Smith, author of Nothing Serious, through an important figure in both of our writing careers, Chloé Caldwell. I also had the pleasure of interviewing Emily earlier on her road to publication, so it’s been cool to follow her trajectory with her debut novel.

In this conversation, she was refreshingly honest about everything from querying agents to developmental edits, book tours, platform building, publicity, advances, and the emotional roller coaster of seeing your book grow up, leave home, and go out into the world.

Emily spent about five years writing and revising an autobiographical novel before querying roughly 80 agents. Their feedback was devastatingly consistent. “They were all saying no, and primarily because it didn’t have enough plot.”

Instead of dismissing the criticism as industry drivel, she took it to heart. “I was like, okay, I’m going to write a book with a plot in it. And there’s going to be a death... if that’s what agents want.”

Funny enough, she was initially embarrassed by her revision. “I was actually so ashamed that I wrote this like murder mystery. I was like, I want to be a literary fiction girly.”

Three years later, after seeing shows like Killing Eve, The White Lotus, and The Undoing, she revisited the manuscript with fresh eyes. “I was like, oh, really interesting art can be made that also has this suspense element.” It’s important to remember that commercial storytelling and literary ambition don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Even after beefing up the novel’s plot, the querying process wasn’t magically easier. Emily racked up another 30 agent rejections.

One point of feedback was to make the ending bigger. She gave it the ol’ college try, but it wasn’t meant to be. “It was so bad. Like it made the book so bad.”

Instead of forcing the manuscript into something it wasn’t, she trusted her instincts—and eventually found the right champion. “Thank god this one agent was like, ‘I love the book.’” After finally finding her agent, the novel sold quickly.

The lesson isn’t to ignore feedback, but rather to distinguish between notes that strengthen your vision vs. notes that ask you to turn your project into something it’s not.

One huge upside of finally selling the book was the opportunity to work with a professional editor who really believed in the book. “When you work on a novel for so long by yourself and you’re just in the trenches by yourself, like in circles, in circles, and you finally have someone who’s like, ‘I want to work with you to make this better’… it was such a dream.”

She laughed remembering how excited she was to tackle revisions. “I would stay up all night working on these edits.”

There’s something so energizing about working with an editor who gets it. Instead of trying to fundamentally reshape the novel, they focused on improving what already worked about the book.

If you’ve ever wondered whether published authors ever feel completely “done” with their books, the answer is... not exactly.

Emily admitted that during each new production stage she struggled to stop tinkering. “I did have those moments where I’m like, I would love to like add another scene, but that’s off the table.”

I can attest that learning when to let go is one of the hardest parts of becoming an author.

Emily offered a candid breakdown of the support traditional publishing actually does—and doesn’t—provide.

Yes, HarperCollins got her into bookstores. Yes, they sent advance copies to influencers and media. Yes, they got her coverage she couldn’t have gotten herself (like via The New York Times). But still, she found herself handling the lion’s share of promotion.

“I still had to do my whole book tour. I still had to do like so much self-promotion, place essays, place interviews, all of that is so on you.” That’s a reality I hear from almost every traditionally published author these days.

Emily isn’t naturally drawn to social media (same), and she shared a devastatingly relatable content creation story. “I spent three or four hours on a stupid reel and then it got like 25 likes or something horrific.” At that point, she decided to stop forcing herself into a marketing strategy that she A) hated and B) wasn’t delivering a good ROI.

So instead of trying to become a full-time TikTok creator, she leaned into something she’s actually passionate about. “I invested in Substack because the form I like is essays and long-form content,” she explained.

“I think you just have to find the line for yourself where it’s like, don’t make yourself crazy.” Amen.

Emily did hire a publicist—but only for a very limited engagement—and focused much of her own energy on highly personalized outreach. Rather than blasting generic pitches everywhere, she researched exactly who might genuinely connect with her book.

One outreach email eventually led to an influencer organically posting about the novel, creating unexpected momentum. As Emily said, “you never know” what’s going to work. Publishing is full of variables you can’t control. The only thing you can control is the time and effort you invest.

If you’re querying, revising, wondering whether to hire a developmental editor, stressing over platform, or simply trying to keep going through round after round of rejection, I think you’ll get a lot out of this conversation.

🎧 Listen to the full episode with Emily J. Smith—or watch the video version on YouTube.

Happy bleeding!
Courtney

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