On Publishing a Book While Living Abroad

Tips for Querying & Releasing a Book from Overseas

This month, I received a lot of great questions about living abroad as an American writer. These questions revolved around the logistics of querying and selling a book to an American publisher while overseas. As you probably know, I lived in South Korea until very recently. This post will dive into the nitty gritty of how life abroad impacted my querying process and the sale of my debut novel, Good People. I’ll also break down why I had to move back to the US ahead of Good People’s release.

Taken in Sinchon c. 2019. Sinchon is the setting for my short story, “Eat You Whole.”

Before we jump in, it’s important to note that I’m a US citizen, and my agency and publisher are all based in the US. This means that I’m not a great resource for info on (1) US publishing deals for writers who are not US citizens or (2) publishing deals for markets outside of the United States. All that said, the tips shared below might be helpful to other American writers living abroad.

January 2025 AMA

1. Did querying from outside the US present any problems or challenges?

In early 2019, I received my first agent solicitation for Good People. This agent discovered me on Twitter. At the time, I was living in Seoul and tweeting about the writing life and my experience abroad. Since an American agent solicited my manuscript while I was in Korea, I don’t think living abroad is a deterrent for agents or should pose any concern for querying writers.

As for the query process itself, I actually queried while I was based in the US. The summer of 2019, I moved back to the US for 18 months to finish grad school before returning to Korea. That September, I queried while I was an MFA student in Florida. But again, I don’t think living abroad would negatively impact a writer’s querying experience.

The only challenge I faced when I moved back to Korea was scheduling meetings with my team at Writers House. My agent is based in New York and our in-house book editor is based in Alaska. This meant that I was almost always jumping onto our editorial calls at 4 AM my local time. A sacrifice I was willing to make, of course, but a struggle nevertheless.

2. Did you move back to the US because you HAD to for your writing career? If so, what is the reason you must be in the States?

Yes and no.

I had to move back to the US last year to manage some personal stuff unrelated to writing, but shortly after we sold the book, my agent and editor strongly suggested that I either: