My book died on submission. I'm putting it out anyway.
I decided to self-publish my debut novel, Love Be Damned. Here's the story (behind the story, lmao)
Hi!
My name is Briana Garrett, and I’m a YA author. I love writing fantasy, science fiction, and everything in between, but more than all of that, I believe that Black girls can face anything with humor, heart, and family.
Previously, my former agent and I went on submission with Love Be Damned, my YA contemporary romantic-fantasy novel about a girl who is trying to save her sister from the demon who possessed her boyfriend. It’s a love letter I wrote to Black girls everywhere who may not feel seen or feel like they matter. And earlier this year, I really thought I was going to have a book deal with a Big Five publishing house.
Let’s just say it didn’t work out (lol).
The long and short version of the story are essentially the same, in that I got stuck in the dreaded revision hell. Or, in my case, revision purgatory.
I kid you not, over the course of my entire two-year submission process, I received not one- not two- but THREE requests from editors (all at Big Five publishing houses) to revise my book based on what they believed would sell. These requests are otherwise known as revise & resubmit requests, or R&Rs.
The first revise and resubmit request came from an editor at Macmillan, only three months after I had initially gone on submission. I’ll admit, it was a lot to process. Not only was I not expecting a response that quickly (because publishing is notoriously slow, MY GOD), but I had never been given a revise and resubmit request before, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.
After talking it through with some of my agent siblings at the time, I thought the R&R had to be a good sign because it was essentially someone from a major publisher taking the time to tell me that my book was almost good enough to make it- with just a little elbow grease we could get it over the line to publication.
It also seemed positive that the editor wanted to video chat with me to go over all of the changes that she wanted in the rewrite. When we met, she seemed really enthusiastic about the story: she loved the characters and the ending, but she said that the structure of the book was off, and I needed to rewrite a large portion of the second act in order to make the book more cohesive.
So, a little shaken but ultimately reassured, I did an outline according to her instructions and turned in at least two revisions that she guided me through in order to make the book as strong as possible. By this point, about six months had passed since our original meeting, and so after she read the last revision, the editor from Macmillan said everything looked good.
Only- WAIT!
A new challenger was approaching!
ANOTHER R&R had come in, this time from an imprint at HarperCollins. But because I was so focused on the editor from Macmillan who seemed very excited about my book, HarperCollins decided to bow out. They said I could circle back to them if the Macmillan situation fell through.
(Spoiler- it did.)
The last time I heard directly from the editor at Macmillan was in November of 2023, right before Thanksgiving, and it was a nice message about being excited about taking my book to acquisitions in the new year, where she would try to convince the rest of her imprint at the publisher to buy it.
So I wait! …And wait…And wait.
The new year comes, and I don’t hear anything. For two whole months.
Around Valentines Day I hit up my agent to see if there’s any news, and the news is…
Say it with me, everybody, “Another revision!”
Yup, that’s right.
Apparently, someone in one of the pre-meetings at Macmillan raised a minor concern about my first few chapters (which had never been considered a problem before), and so I was expected to rewrite the opening now. I heard all of this second-hand from my agent, and we were both a little caught off guard by this.
By that point, I didn’t want to continue to make changes to my novel with the “promise of a possibility” of being published. The longer this went on, the more I couldn’t help but feel like the editor I’d been working with had strung me along, no matter how good her intentions were from the start.
I decided not to do the final* revision that was asked for, mostly because I didn’t agree with the change, and I had already spent over half a year trying to get this book in good enough shape to go to acquisitions, only to be told “nice try.”
Despite that, I hoped that they would still consider this book and take it to the acquisitions meeting anyway.
They didn’t.
Macmillan officially passed on the manuscript about a week after I declined the final* revision.
“Literally a couple days (or maybe a week) after the initial rejection from [Macmillan], I got YET ANOTHER R&R request, this time from [REDACTED] at Hachette. It was another Big 5 Publishing House, but by this point I just had to laugh (cry) at the fact that 3/5 big houses liked my book enough to tell me to rewrite it, lol.”
-Quote from my personal journal about this whole experience
The depression had hardly set in when I got a hilariously devastating email soon thereafter about another imprint at Hachette who wanted to give me notes for an exclusive R&R, by which point I was like,
Literally, for context, when my agent told me about the third R&R request, this was the actual email I sent in response (edited to protect confidentiality):
Needless to say, when I got the revision notes from the editor at Hachette, I discovered that the revisions they wanted were actually not small. I was, again, being asked to completely rewrite large portions of the story that I had already rewritten.
(I was really close to discovering the answer to Theseus’s paradox, just through manuscript revisions. Yeesh.)
By this point, I was no longer flattered by the idea of my book being “almost good enough to make it,” because not only had I received several R&R requests, but it became clear to me that every editor had a different idea about what the book should’ve been, thus proving that all of this process was incredibly subjective, and frankly- made up.
I said thank you, but no thank you to Hachette’s revision request.
It’s been months since then, and I don’t regret my decision to walk away from the last Macmillan R&R, nor do I regret my decision to decline the Hachette R&R.**
After that, though, my book essentially died on submission. It had been out for two years, and every editor with even a vague interest in the book had expressed that I was “so close” but “not quite what they were looking for.”
I’m not going to pretend like I wasn’t devastated to hear that my book may never come out. I definitely was.
But then I remembered that a lot of people’s books die on submission. By all accounts, it’s more common than a book deal. So many books don’t make it past the initial editor rejections, despite them being “good enough” to secure an agent, or even interesting enough to have readers lined up ready to read their work before publication.
I remembered that everything in publishing is sorta made up, and that you can kinda do whatever you want.
“[…] [Y]ou can just do shit. There is no hierarchy, waitlist, clearance, or credentials that you need. Skip the gatekeeping, bypass the cliques. It's not real. The literary world exists at the intersection of delusion and illusion.”
-Taco Bell Quarterly Twitter Account (@TBQuarterly)
Even after all the heartbreak I went through with this book, I still really wanted it to come out.
So, I revived it.
Some may call that stubborn, but I call it brave. (Or delusional, take your pick).
All that’s to say, I'm thrilled to announce that my debut novel, Love Be Damned, will be released next year, in Spring of 2025!
If Love Be Damned sounded interesting to you, here is the official blurb:
Teen fashionista Ayana always believed she’d go to hell and back for her sister, Sabrina, but she never thought it would be so literal. After a family dinner where Sabrina’s boyfriend, Damian, is replaced by a shape-shifting mirror demon that’s out for her soul, Ayana is forced to put her designing dreams on hold to become the chic demon-slayer her sister needs.
Unfortunately, demon hunting isn’t as easy as sprinkling holy water around, especially after she has a brush with death and is rescued by sweet, musical Carter. Not only is he charming and handsome, but suddenly he’s popping up everywhere, distracting her from her mission. Just as she starts to fall for him, coincidences begin to pile up, Ayana realizes that Carter and Damian’s sudden appearances in her life may not be due to chance after all. Perhaps the two are more intertwined than she thought.
To save her sister and protect her heart, Ayana is forced to team up with her disaster cousin, her baking-obsessed best friend, and her eccentric guardian angel to confront the one thing she hadn’t been expecting to fight: love.
In this stylish, laugh-out-loud story of sisterhood and self-acceptance, Ayana learns to face the demon in the mirror, and that sometimes, you can fall in love for the hell of it.
If you were ever a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or That's So Raven, I'm sure you're going to love this story. This book is full of hilarious dialogue, snarky demons, cinnamon roll love interests (who also love cinnamon rolls, lol) and memorable, chaotic characters.
The official release date is planned for Spring 2025, but I will be sure to keep you all posted when things become more concrete. Be on the lookout for a cover reveal and pre-order information in the coming months.
I do want to clarify that I think revision requests can be helpful in most cases, and this isn’t to bash anyone who has requested a revision or who has completed one with the hopes of obtaining a book deal or agent representation. This is just my experience.
Truthfully, the first couple of revisions that I completed for the editor at Macmillan did genuinely improve my book. I learned a lot throughout this process, and I don’t regret any of the choices I made. My take on revisions is that if you agree with the notes that someone is giving you, or if you’re receiving a lot of similar feedback, then maybe you should consider making some changes to your project.
But keep in mind that it’s all up to you. You wrote the story, and so only you know what’s best for your book. You can literally do whatever you want.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope you stick around and join my writing group! Subscribe below if you want more details about Love Be Damned as it comes out.
In the meantime, please enjoy this lovely character art I commissioned of the characters, as done by @starrysola on Twitter (X).
Ayana and Sabrina:
Nova and Damian:
Eva and Theo:
Ayana and Carter:
*definitely not final, by any means. These were just the revisions I had to make to get in the door. That doesn’t mention the developmental edits I would likely have to do once the book sold, along with copy edits and line edits.
**I never heard anything back about the HarperCollins R&R because I had parted with my agent before they could finish reading the previous revisions I had already done.