astrology for writers IS A BOOK
PLUS: being on sub + editor rejections!
Almost two years ago, after I’d shelved yet another nonfiction proposal post-Heretic, my agent Dana Murphy told me, “The best book you’re going to write is going to be the book you can’t give up.”
Here’s a book that I didn’t give up:
I am so excited to get to bring the vision of this newsletter to life as an actual book you can hold in your hands. I will be working with Diana Ventimiglia and Natalie Bautista at Balance (a practical nonfiction imprint within Hachette), and I’m lucky to once again be in the hands of editors who get the project on a soul-deep level.
I want to also take the first (of many) opportunities to thank you, dear reader, without whom this never would have happened.
Y’all made the case to traditional publishing as to why this book should exist. Thank you.
Longtime readers of the newsletter will know that I am passionate about industry transparency. See: my annual publishing Q&As that I host with my agent, the ~real talk~ in our private astrology for writers Discord server, and entire missives devoted to lifting the curtain to show what publishing really looks like.
So this is not just announcement email, but also a chance to discuss how the hell the deal happened in the first place. How is this book getting brought into the world? A few months ago, I wrote about going out on submission and the underlying rules of white civility in publishing that keep authors siloed and silenced. Now, on the other side of being on sub, I can speak to the grittier details like,
the timeline of this book, from conception to sale
what being on submission with practical nonfiction is like in 2025, including
a sample of anonymized editor rejections and what they indicate about industry concerns like: do nonfiction writers need a platform?
But before we dive into the real behind-the-scenes, I want to offer my broad, high-level takeaways from this latest round of being on submission. Namely, that
traditional (nonfiction) publishing is more conservative and risk-averse than ever.
Don’t take my word for it; go check the nonfiction acquisitions on Publishers Marketplace (or see the rejections below!). More than half of nonfiction announcements are book as product, book as merchandise for an influencer or celebrity. Many editors are explicitly seeking sure bets from existing brands.
And in the world of nonfiction, you need to have a big-enough existing platform. In this, we are setting aside the subject matter experts — the doctors and PhDs writing about the human brain or the history of fascism, for example. For narrative nonfiction writers (essayists, memoirists, bloggers like me and you) and certainly for my fellow subject matter experts in less respected practical nonfiction categories like, say, occultism and astrology, the most commonly used indicator of platform is our social media following and/or email list. Full stop.
The average narrative or prescriptive nonfiction writer needs a substantial social media following and/or email list — preferably both. I was told this in multiple editor rejections from different houses (discussed below). Mind, publishers will not give you an exact number threshold they’re looking for. And while I generally do not begrudge companies their internal benchmarks, editors’ reluctance to offer even a range of the follower or subscriber count they’re looking for feels ~not great~! We the Chronically Online know that not only is social dying, but that it’s impossible to organically “grow” a viral “brand” through consistent content like you could in 2015 or even 2020.
Acquiring editors on the ground know that social is dying. They know that social is not a reliable driver of book sales, nor the best way to measure author platform in an age of billionaire-controlled algorithms that punish dissent. But they are also in a messy middle where their bosses demand a P&L based on something, and the new, non-social “something” has yet to be widely defined.
It is clear that publishing as an industry is struggling with how to quantify an author’s platform outside of “traditional” social media, and that this has contributed to the increased cautiousness in acquisitions.
Contributed, not wholly caused. The economy is bad, Trump is president, there are tariffs? There is so much that is, genuinely, outside of major publishers’ control right now.
But there’s even more that is outside of authors’ control — especially debut or underprivileged authors. Yes, the economy is bad, but publishers have been gouging their own work forces for years. Editors are overloaded, and marketing and publicity teams are stretched far too thin. Publishers have increasingly embraced the Silicon Valley model of “streamlining” business (driven by capitalist Profit above all else) — except books aren’t tech.
What if major publishers invested in their own employees so as to better serve not only authors but also their books — and so consequently, their bottom line?
(You gotta spend money to make money, amiright?)
What if, instead of outsourcing a book’s market to under-resourced (debut, marginalized) authors and relying on outdated social media promotion, publishers doubled down on investing in the Literary Culture at large and so worked to cultivate and create the audience for their books?
Agents Eric Hane and Laura Zats recently discussed on their excellent podcast Print Run that literary culture, not social media, is what actually sells books. And this dovetails with my firmly held belief that a social media campaign is simply one of the worst possible ways to promote books, a shelf-stable product with potentially indefinite tails. (Will I still do a promo campaign? Yes, of course. Will I also be brainstorming literally anything else to do that isn’t an Instagram graphic? YES.)
Suffice it to say, when I was selling my first book, I felt very “major publisher or bust.” But this round of submission left me with a deep appreciation for self-publishing and a renewed understanding of why so many writers pursue that route. Lest I sound ungrateful, please know that I’m so grateful for where I’ve landed and the team I’m on — being with editors who get my work is a genuine gift. But in looking at the industry at large, the rose colored glasses are 100% off.
Okay! Let’s get specific in terms of what this sales process was actually like — we’re gonna talk timeline from proposal to sale as well as get into the specific categories of editor rejections (anonymized language included!).
First up, let’s talk timeline: how long did it take to both write the book proposal for Astrology for Artists and then sell it?
The important context of considering this submission round:
I already had an agent (who I’d been with for years)
This was not the first book proposal I’ve written (I even have a downloadable class on How to Write a Book Proposal here — presently on sale for 50% off!)
I had spent 6+ years building this newsletter and also working in the astrology and occult space (for apps like Sanctuary, CHANI, and, since 2021, as a self-employed practitioner), and because of that, I was writing from an area of existing expertise rather than of research-driven discovery
Keep this in mind, as timelines from agent to proposal to submission to offer vary wildly!