A couple of weeks ago I began querying my novel. It’s been a really weird feeling sending it out to a bunch of agents who looked like they might be good matches for the piece, as well as future projects I have planned. I wouldn’t say that querying has been the nightmare some have made it out to be, but it is a process, with a lot of stumbling blocks along the way.
So far I’ve heard back from about 20% of the agents I queried, and sadly received mostly “just not for me” rejections. But I’ve also received a handful of personalized rejections which were quite complimentary on my samples from my book, even if the agent passed because it wasn’t for them. So that’s something, I guess.
Now, I’ve been doing this actively for like, three whole weeks, so I’m totally an expert at this (narrator voice: “No, he’s not.”). But I thought it might be helpful to collect some of the things I’ve learned along the way. Maybe it’ll save you some time in the future.
The first thing I found helpful was to occasionally search the #MSWL tag on Twitter. This is where agents and editors post the type of stories they’re interested in looking at. You can throw in clarifying words as well, to narrow the search. EG: I usually check that hashtag as well as adding things like “horror” “spooky” “vacation” and other relevant words. Think of it like, if you were searching for a book like yours on Google, what search words would you use to look for it? Even while I was finishing up the novel I was keeping an eye on that, and making notes of possible agents to send it to when I was done.
You can also look for agents actively seeking books by genre on the MSWL website. QueryTracker also has a way to filter by agents. I haven’t dug into that one yet; I’m saving it for my next round if nothing pans out with the agents I found on the MSWL site.
And for goodness sake, keep a spreadsheet to keep track of all the people you contact. The one I built has the following columns: Name, Agency, How I Found Them, How I Queried, Response, and Notes. I found it’s important to keep track of the Agency name because most agencies only want you contacting one of their agents at a time.
That should get you a solid list of agents to start with, but that’s just the beginning of the process. Read each agent’s query submission guidelines, and only send them exactly what they ask for. I’m not even talking about not sending a gory horror story to someone who’s only interested in reading flowery romance (though that’s also good advice; don’t do that). No, I’m talking more about what you’re going to put in your query submission “packet.” This got fun pretty quickly because almost every agent I contacted asked for slightly different things.
A the core, you need a query letter. The query letter is going to introduce you to the agent, and agents are notoriously busy, so you want to pack as much information into as little space as possible. Introduce yourself, introduce your story, and try to explain why you think the agent might like your piece (EG: “I noticed on Twitter you said you like stories about giant penguins! My story features a giant penguin!”; but don’t act like a creepy stalker). More advice on a query letter here. Everything I read said that this part of your query should be under one page. Stick to that.
The query letter I wrote includes a two sentence “pitch” for the book, and then a five sentence “blurb” as well. You’ll want to have both a pitch and a blurb, in addition to a synopsis. The synopsis was really tricky for me, as I had to describe the entire plot of the book in just a couple of pages. You want to highlight all the story beats, and spoil the ending here. And all in like, 1% or less of the length of your entire book. A friend described writing a synopsis as “imagine you’re telling the story of a film to someone who’s never seen the movie.” All the highlights and beats of your story. Here’s a good article on writing your synopsis. And remember that you really do have to “spoil” the ending of the book here. You’re querying someone who’s going to (hopefully) want to represent your book to publishing houses, so they need to know what they’re getting into.
The query letter and synopsis were the two biggest things I had to complete to begin, but along the way I was also asked multiple times to provide the following samples from the book. I ended up creating files with just these pieces, so I could attach, or copy/paste the text as necessary (note that some agents would accept attachments, many wouldn’t, so have both ready):
5 pages
10 pages
20 pages
30 pages
First chapter
First two chapters
First three chapters
For the 5-30 page samples, I tried to get as close to that total page number as I could while also ending on sort of a cliffhanger each time.
I guess that’s about it for what I’ve learned so far. Hopefully some of this is helpful to others out there in the #WritingCommunity who are hitting the querying trenches. Remember not to reply to rejections, even the kind ones. Also remember (or try to convince yourself) that rejections aren’t an indictment of your work, or your worth. I always try to remind myself that all art is subjective, and even if one person didn’t care for my work, the next person might love it.
Oh, and don’t send your queries out in December. That’s when agents are getting slammed by people who wrote their novels in November during NaNoWriMo.
Good luck!