Surviving the Ever Changing World of Publishing by Sara Ackerman

I was that person who believed that once you landed an agent, and then a book deal, you had officially earned a golden ticket to success and forever book deals. Back in 2016, it was my fourth manuscript that got me an agent, and that book, Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers, released in early 2018. It’s a WWII novel set in Hawai’i, and at the time, WWII fiction was really getting rolling. Kate Quinn had recently published The Alice Network and I got lucky with the timing of that trend. My next four novels, all WWII Hawaii stories featured strong and courageous women and shined a light little known events in our islands–ground Zero in the Pacific Theater.

Mind you, I had never set out to write five WWII novels, but my publisher (a HarperCollins imprint) kept wanting more, and so I dug deep, mining my family and friends and other books for ideas. Having to learn about cryptanalysis, early radar systems, and everything there was to know about Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific really tested me as a writer. But as the books continued, I began itching to write in other genres. For my fifth novel, I decided on a dual timeline novel, set in 1942 and 1965. It was a way for me to dip my toes into another era, one that I was fascinated by, and my publisher was all for it.

By then, the WWII space was pretty saturated and my publisher agreed it was time to move onto something else entirely for my next book. But my contract was for historical fiction, so I searched high and low for ideas and came upon the fascinating history of the 1927 Dole Air Race – to be the first to fly from California to Hawai’i in 1927. 27+ hours in a tiny plane over the vast Pacific, and some of the teams evaporated into thin air. This was one of those ideas that screamed at me to be written. Again, I did a dual timeline.

Meanwhile, my original editor had departed my publisher as soon as she finished editing my fifth book, so I was assigned a new editor. In publishing terms, I was orphaned. This was hard for me, since I loved my editor and I felt like she really understood me and my books. Sales began to slow and rather than my career rising like it had been for those first five, it began going the other direction, and that terrified me. Changing genres is not for the faint of heart! Still, I put out two more books, one a total change for me–a love story set in the world of big wave surfing and the remote rainforests of Maui, and the other a dual timeline inspired by the mysterious death of Jane Stanford (of the University) in 1905 in Waikiki. Though loved by readers, the books again did not make a big splash saleswise.

At that point, things were beginning to feel a little bleak. In this business, advances and future book deals are often directly influenced by how your last book did, regardless of how hard (or not hard) your publisher pushes it. And any book that is not a lead title (those big books you see on end tables at bookstores and making all the lists) does not have a big chance to sell many copies. It’s just how it is. No matter how good the book is or how badly you wish it to be so. I had been living this truth for a while now, and at this point was beginning to feel burned out after writing at least a book a year (sometimes two) for so many years and feeling like I was losing ground as an author.

The next blow was a reorganization of several publishing imprints under HarperCollins, including mine, and my then editor (by this time I’d gone through 4 editors) was moved to another imprint, and my imprint became strictly romance. Fortunately, my agent and I had pitched another book (The Shark House, which released in January 2026) to other publishers and we landed a 2 book deal. Hooray! I had a dream team. A publisher and editor who were super excited about my books! But as soon as I was done with my revisions for The Shark House, my editor moved to another house and my publisher also left. I was heartbroken but assigned to a wonderful editor who I’m enjoying working with on my next book, The Volcano Keeper.

It is not lost on me that I am extremely fortunate to have nine (soon to be 10) books published with a Big 5 publisher. I am (mostly) living the dream that my younger self hoped for, even if it is a slightly skewed version of that with (way) more ups and downs than I had anticipated. My agent and I have been brainstorming book ideas and I keep wondering if I should switch to writing thrillers or romances or something more likely to be a ‘big’ book. And then I plot out my ideas and they seem to hover in my lane of emotionally driven women’s fiction with a strong sense of place (Hawai‘i) and a central mystery or tension.

I have no idea what the future holds other than I love being an author and I love sharing my stories with the world, and no matter what it takes, I will keep writing. I think the key is going to be to write what I want to write, but find a way to give it a bigger hook, bigger stakes, and ask myself “Will people say to their friends after reading ‘You have to read this!’” Will my story make people feel deeply? Will it make them have to keep turning the pages? If the answer is no, then I need to keep plotting. I always think back to that Post-It on my wall in those early days when I was working on my first several (still unpublished) novels that said Patience & Perseverance. That motto has served me well and will continue to as I navigate this wild world of publishing.

 

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Sara Ackerman is the Hawaiʻi born, USA Today bestselling author of nine novels set in the islands, including The Guest in Room 120 and The Shark House. Her books have been labeled “unforgettable” by Apple Books, “empowering & deliciously visceral” by Book Riot, and New York Times bestselling authors Kate Quinn and Madeline Martin have praised Sara’s novels as “fresh and delightful” and “brilliantly written.” Amazon chose Radar Girls as a best book of the month, and ALA Booklist gave The Codebreaker’s Secret a starred review. Find out more about Sara and her books at www.ackermanbooks.com and follow her on Instagram @saraackermanbooks and on FB @ackermanbooks.

THE SHARK HOUSE

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers