Next in our publishing origin stories is ROBIN LOVETT’s whirl wind journey to her first big five book deal. (Don’t forget to check out Alexis Daria’s story.)

I was lucky. Getting an agent came pretty easy for me. Well, easy if you count writing three books before sending out my fourth to query. I made decisions based on market research, what I’d heard at writing conferences from editor and agent panels. I gave up on my dystopian romance book and wrote an erotic contemporary–because that’s what they said was selling. And it worked, for getting an agent at least.

Rachel Brooks of the L. Perkins asked for a Revise & Resubmit (R&R) then signed my dark erotic romance. There’s some stuff I can’t tell you about here — see Kim Bell’s The First Rule of Pubclub. This was winter 2015.

But my luck ran out there. Unfortunately, for that book, the ending is not happy. It was on submission for a year and did not sell.

That’s right–a year.

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