Want to write a novel? Chances are it won&x27;t work out as you&x27;d expect. Josh Rivera, USA TODAYSun, March 22, 2026 at 9:02 AM UTC 0 (From left to right) Novelists Ocean Vuong, Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca F. Kuang, Matt Haig, Taylor Jenkins Reid. "From Pitch to Publication" is a series taking readers behind the curtain of modern publishing as a business. I'm so accustomed to rejection that I brace myself for every email – even before opening. Even when good news may be waiting after that click. Writers, and all creatives to an extent, have to get accustomed to "no.
Want to write a novel? Chances are it won't work out as you'd expect.
Josh Rivera, USA TODAYSun, March 22, 2026 at 9:02 AM UTC
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(From left to right) Novelists Ocean Vuong, Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca F. Kuang, Matt Haig, Taylor Jenkins Reid.
"From Pitch to Publication" is a series taking readers behind the curtain of modern publishing as a business.
I'm so accustomed to rejection that I brace myself for every email – even before opening. Even when good news may be waiting after that click.
Writers, and all creatives to an extent, have to get accustomed to "no."
About 81% of Americans feel that they have a book in them, according to an often cited survey reported in The New York Times (from the early 2000s). Many aspire to write and publish a book in their lifetime, but only a small fraction see their work formally acquired and announced each year. A little over 2,000 fiction writers announced deals in 2025 on Publishers Marketplace.
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This year, one of those deals announced is mine: My debut young adult novel, "How to Kill a Chupacabras," was acquired by independent publisher Tiny Ghost Press. I almost dismissed the email confirming the offer as another rejection.
I started writing this novel in 2021. My father, who inspired it, landed in the hospital as I was drafting the outline. He developed complications from cancer. I wrote the book at home, before work shifts, on weekends, beside my dad's hospital bed.
That 2021 idea was ultimately acquired in 2024, announced in Publishers Marketplace this week, and expected to publish in the summer of 2027.
That's six years from spark to publication date. And that's not unusual. Two years from acquisition to publication is considered a "normal" timeline.
So, when people ask, "Can anyone get a book deal?" what they're often asking is something else:
Is this still possible for people who aren't famous?
Do I have to know somebody in the industry?
And if I do everything "right," will it still take years?
In short: Yes, no and maybe. A book deal is attainable – to some extent. It's also not a finish line. Here's what aspiring novelists and readers should know about the behind-the-scenes of publishing a fiction book.
The part people don't see: fewer chairs, louder music
The publishing industry is consolidating, which means fewer imprints (and fewer editors). During the hearings for the proposed Penguin Random House merger with Simon & Schuster, Judge Florence Pan said in his written opinion: "It is significant that in a market already prone to collusion, where coordinated conduct already appears to be rampant, PRH's acquisition of S&S would reinforce the market's oligopsonistic structure."
Still, about 300 of the deals announced last year went "to auction," which means imprints had a bidding war for them.
When editors are stretched thinner, the time it takes to nurture talent – especially debut authors – shrinks. The industry's ability to take a slow bet on a writer, to develop them the way record labels develop musicians or sports teams develop rookies, becomes increasingly rare.
I lucked out in connecting with Tiny Ghost Press Founder and Editorial Director Joshua Perry through a call for submissions on social media.
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"The first question I ask (authors) is, what goals do you want to achieve with this particular publication?" said Michelle Herrera Mulligan, vice president and associate publisher at Primero Sueño, an imprint of Atria Books – a division of Simon & Schuster. "Are you trying to heal a trauma, create social change or be a commercially successful author publishing book after book? All of those are legitimate goals, but they would deploy very different strategies and very different budgets."
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Independent publishers and small-to-medium imprints often stand out because of that personalized care. That's no shade to the Big Five – Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers and HarperCollins – but novelists in a massive house compete with celebrity memoirs and household-name writers for resources. Their books are in a busy (but quite effective) ecosystem.
It's not easy, but it's doable
One wrinkle in the process is that imprints under the same parent company can't bid against each other, thus limiting the number of deals.
The number of traditionally published books in the U.S. rose in 2025 by 6.6%, to 642,242 from the prior year, according to statistics compiled by Bowker for Publishers Weekly. Among those, 64,449 titles were adult and juvenile fiction.
Even when the book is good, "we have less places to sell things than we have in the past," Carly Watters, senior literary agent at PS Literary, told USA TODAY. "A lot of things are more predicated on the appetites of a smaller group of people … there might be separate imprints, but they all share an editorial board meeting."
Quality aside, a novel also has to be "sellable" to stand out in those meetings. "In my experience, (books) that are easily pitchable, meaning we can sum up – hook, line, sinker – in one sentence, that's something that I can get people's attention with," Watters added. There are gorgeous books that are hard to summarize, she said. The kind you want to hand someone and say, "Just read it, then call me."
Those books can sell. But it's harder.
Eric Smith, literary agent and founder of Neighborhood Literary, agreed that for novelists, the product is what dictates the trajectory – more so than who the author is.
"I feel like you see a lot of contrasting thoughts on it regarding like, 'Oh, you need X-amount of platform, or you somebody who knows somebody.' But none of that's true," Smith said. "I have plenty of clients who have no social media following or the book that they wrote is the very first book they have ever written, and they ... get book deals just as much as somebody who has a million followers on TikTok or has two MFAs or something."
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Plenty of his clients come from cold querying (sending an email or form pitch) with no connections in the industry. But also, his inbox – when he's open to submissions – can reach thousands in a few months. Smith estimated he received around 3,000 submissions over roughly 90 days and signed a handful last year.
That number can seem terrifying until you remember something important: Most of those submissions weren't "bad writers." They just weren't the right fit. Or the timing was wrong. Or the market was saturated. Or an editor had just acquired something similar. Or an imprint closed. Or an editor got laid off. Or the editorial board said, "We already have a slot like this."
You can do everything right and still lose to the invisible calendar of the industry.
Consolidation makes that sharper. Smith described it plainly: Agents can't send five projects in a row to the same editor without burning that bridge.
So yes, it can be more challenging now; not because the "gatekeepers" hate writers, but because the gate is servicing fewer lanes.
"I do think that anybody can (get a book deal), but I will say that they really have to want it, and (authors) have to know why they want it," Herrera Mulligan said. "There's a huge chunk of your time in your life that's going to be taken up to build this book more than you could ever imagine … Nobody's going to know your platform better than you are. Nobody's going to know your reader, and more importantly, no one's going to know your work itself and how special it is to you."
Is it easy? No, but it's possible. The industry's slow gears made it so my father died before I could show him the book he inspired, and those are the kind of trade-offs every aspiring traditionally published novelist should know.
As Watters said, people who aren't optimistic don't last long in this industry.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can anyone get a book deal? What it takes to be a novelist in 2026.
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Published: March 22, 2026 at 11:45AM on Source: RON MAG
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