How do Book Auctions Work? + Big News coming soon!

Diary #1: Auctions, Highest Bid vs. Best Bid, Preempt Offers, and more

Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:

🤓 What I’m Reading This Week

💛 Big News Coming Soon!

🫣 Behind the Scenes: What Happens When a Book Goes to Auction?

❓ What would you like to hear about in future Author Diaries?

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🤓 What I’m Reading This Week

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano - (novel, comedic murder mystery) - If you’re in the mood to suspend disbelief, I enjoyed this story about a single mom who inadvertently becomes a hit woman, all while juggling a book deadline, a sassy preschooler, and baby who is always pooping at the most inopportune times. It’s just the right amount of silliness that I could imagine Tina Fey playing the main character.

“The Unsung Inventors of ‘Meg Ryan Fall’” - (article, Substack) - a fun piece with excerpts from interviews with the costume designers of When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail, who created Meg Ryan’s cozy autumn sweater outfits.

“The Inside Story of ‘Animaniacs’—How We Got Yakko, Wakko, and Dot” (article, MEL) - I adored the Animaniacs when I was younger, and I was tickled to read this piece about their origin story. Did anyone else also love the Animaniacs?

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💛 Big News Coming Soon!

I want to share a secret with you. I’ve been quietly working on a new novel this year, which I haven’t talked much about to date.

But I just heard from my editor that all the info is going to be public soon, including a cover reveal, so I’ll get to tell you all about it in the next week or two!

In the meantime, my plan is to write an “author diary” entry each month, taking you behind the scenes of the making of this novel, from idea to publication.

Speaking of which…

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🫣 Behind the Scenes: What Happens When Publishers Bid for a Book in an Auction?

My next two books sold to a publisher at auction!

Woohoo!

But now some of you are thinking, What does that even mean?

Well, friends, sit back and relax, because I’m about to pull back the curtains and explain.

note: what I share is based on my experience in traditional publishing since that’s where my career has been. If you’re interested in self-publishing, The Author Stack by

Russell Nohelty

is a great resource. Either way, I’m cheering you on!

What is a Book Auction?

Maybe you’ve heard of book auctions, maybe you haven’t—basically, it’s when multiple publishers want a manuscript, and they have to bid against each other to get it.

Let’s back up a step. When a writer has finished writing their novel and revised it to a spiffy polish, their agent sends it out “on submission” to editors who might be interested. (Most of the time, fiction authors must write the entire book before they can go on submission. Veteran novelists and non-fiction authors, however, can go on submission with a detailed proposal of the book.)

Usually, the quick “this book is not for me” responses come first. These sting a little, but they’re actually a good thing. You want your book in the hands of an editor who adores it as much as you do. If someone knows right off the bat that the story is not for them, that editor is not for you, either.

The First Yes

But then an editor does fall in love! She emails your agent as soon as she’s done reading your manuscript and gushes, saying things like, “I NEED this book! I’m going to talk to the rest of the team here and propose an acquisition.”

Cue: author screaming.

Your agent is a cool cucumber, though. She reaches out to the other editors who have your manuscript and says, “Hey, I’ve got interest on this book. Let me know soon what you think.”

Editors bump your manuscript to the top of their pile. Sometimes this results in them reading it and deciding, it’s lovely, but not for me. But other times, a few other editors will fall in love!

This is what happened for my upcoming novels, which sold in a two-book deal at auction.

The Auction: Highest Bidder vs. Best Bid

At this point, your agent announces that an auction will take place. She also decides what kind of auction:

• Highest Bidder - based solely on the $$$ of the advance. This can go multiple rounds, with lower bidders dropping out in the early rounds and higher bidders continuing on, until there is a winner.

• Best Bid - based on the total package offered by the publisher, which includes not only the advance but their ideas for revising the book, as well as marketing and publicity. This is usually one or two rounds only, since the publishers are supposed to be showing up with their best bid from the get-go.

• there are probably other kinds of auctions, but these are the two most common.

My agent, Thao Le, and I decided that we wanted to a Best Bid auction, because the editor’s vision for my book is very, very important. She must “get” the story and the characters in the same way I do. Also, publicity and marketing are very important to me.

With Best Bids, the author is free to choose an offer that might not be the highest advance but has (i) an editor whose ideas for the book are more aligned with the author’s, and (ii) a more robust publicity and marketing vision. (Usually you won’t get an actual plan at this stage, because it’s too early. But you can get a good sense of the overall vision.)

Then we settled on a date for the auction. Agents generally set a date about a week in the future, sometimes a little longer, so that editors have time to run around to all their internal departments to get approvals on how much $ to offer and to discuss preliminary publicity or marketing ideas.

What is a Preempt Offer?

If an editor desperately wants to win your book and not compete with other publishers, they can make a preempt offer before the auction date. This is an offer they think is sooo good that it would definitely beat the other editors’ offers, even in an auction.

In fact, sometimes authors turn down preempt offers because they are seduced by the sexy sound of an auction, but then they regret it, because the auction offers never reach the preempt level. And they can’t ask for the preempt offer after they’ve turned it down and gone to auction. (Sometimes, though, the agent and author decide that the auction will likely result in the same or better as the preempt.)

For my upcoming novels, the editors were keen to battle it out at auction, so that’s what they did!

(I have, in the past, accepted preempt offers on other books. It all depends on each individual circumstance.)

Auction Day

I hardly slept the night before the auction. I was waaayyyy too excited! Thao had set the deadline for 12pm ET. Since she and I are both in California on Pacific Time, I knew it meant that as soon as I ate breakfast and showered, Thao would be forwarding the bids to my inbox. (9am PT = 12 pm ET for our non-US readers.)

One after the other, the bids arrived. And they were all so wonderfully gushy, with notes from the editors and others on their teams about how much they loved the book.

(if you’re confused, since I mentioned two books earlier: we went on submission with one book, but I was offered two-book deals from each publisher, with book #2 as an idea TBD .)

Really, it’s an author’s dream come true. I had poured my heart into this book, and hearing the affirmation that it touched everyone’s hearts, as well, made me so happy. They all believed this was the story the world needed, too.

Thao and I hopped on the phone to discuss the offers. They were all amazing!

And then I made a choice.

I’ll tell you all about the winning publisher and editor in my next diary entry!

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❓ What would you like to hear about in future Diaries?

Let me know in the Comments if there are any behind the scenes insights you’re curious about?

I’m hoping to share a “diary entry” each month over the 12 months until my book comes out in August 2025.

Some ideas:

• how book covers are designed

• what happens during developmental editing (or developmental editing vs. copyediting

• getting blurbs from other authors

• what is the difference between publicity and marketing?

• working with both an in-house (publisher) publicist and an external (freelance) publicist

• is it even worth having social media anymore?

If there is anything else you’d like to know about, just holler!

xoxo, ~evelyn

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