an update on TRAD and some really good books i read in 2025

Dec 17

on not getting a book deal in 2025, failure, and some books i enjoyed reading

It’s the time of year when everyone rolls out their accomplishment lists, and, to be honest, they’re all kind of making me want to shrink back into a hole in the ground. Because while 2024 was pretty great publishing-wise (I got an agent! I went on sub with my first book!), 2025 was decidedly…not.

And to be honest, I really thought it was going to be my year. Like, I would have bet money on it if I were a betting person.

Let’s back up a little.

In February of 2025, I had the idea to write a book about a woman who pretends to be a trad wife online and ends up blowing up her own life in the process, inspired loosely by a very real internet scandal that took place. I pitched the idea to my agent, who was following the online discourse, wrote the book, and we got it on sub in a matter of a couple of months. It was a rush.

Editors were emailing her asking to read it. Readers were excited for it. Everyone was telling me it was going to sell immediately, at auction, for six figures. I was hyped. We were all hyped! And yeah, I knew I shouldn’t let myself get too hopeful, because I’d had a book on sub before, I’d had books die in the query trenches before, but if I’m honest with myself, I did think maybe—just maybe—TRAD was the one.

And then…we waited. And waited. And then the passes started trickling in. People liked the book and my writing, but they weren’t connecting with the voice, or they had something similar on their list already, or there was some other subjective feedback they named that prevented them from offering on the book. I did, however, hear back from every single editor we submitted to, which, if you’ve ever been on submission, you know this is a pretty incredible feat, and we got long, personalized feedback from all of them, which, despite the knife twist in the gut of rejection, is a very good sign overall.

And did I learn in this rollercoaster of an experience? What I learned, my friends, is that publishing and the market is a fickle, fickle beast. You cannot predict it, you cannot time it. I learned that I can write a pretty damn good book in a matter of months, which was fun. I don’t regret doing it, I’ll say that.

I had a call with my agent this fall, and, after six months (fast, in publishing), TRAD was dead. We decided not to send it out to any more editors. The moment for trad wives had passed, and editors were no longer interested.

So, what’s it like to have a book die on sub? Well, for one thing, it’s a lot more common than you might realize; it just doesn’t get talked about as often because…well, it sucks, putting a lot of work into something only for it to amount to nothing.

The whole thing is like a relationship. In the beginning, there’s a kind of euphoria. You’re envisioning a future together: what it will be like when your agent calls with the offer, working with your editor, what it will feel like to hold your book in your hands for the first time, your book launch, having readers tell you what the book means to you.

And as more and more rejections roll in, you realize the relationship might not be working out as well as you thought, but you try and justify it in your mind, like hey, it’s okay that he doesn’t call me for days on end or that he keeps texting his ex, it’s fine, right? It could still work out!

And when it’s over, all of the things you imagined, the things you don’t get to do still hurt. You’ll never get to sign the book, you’ll never get to do the cover reveal or send ARCs to readers or talk about how you felt when you wrote certain scenes. But it gets easier every day, just like with a break-up, and sooner or later, it starts to feel better.

And with publishing, if you can’t figure out a way to move on, it’s not really the place for you, so you just have to move on, so that’s what I’m doing, and luckily for me I have an agent who is behind me 100% and friends who support me when I spiral and a plan to keep going no matter what. Rock star romance, anyone?

I’m really big on talking about failure (I even manage a project about getting faculty to talk about their own failures as part of my day job), so I figured it was time to actually walk the walk here. It’s hard to talk about the things you wanted badly and don’t get, but I think it’s especially important in an industry like publishing, where things aren’t always transparent.

We’re all out here just trying our best, and as Taylor Swift said, “Everything you lose is a step you take.”