Author Diary: The Adventures of Querying
Concrete Tools and Tips from a Currently Querying Writer
Hello, Protagonists!
Welcome to another entry in Author Diaries—where we take you behind the scenes of publishing—querying agents, book auctions, cover design, publicity, and more.
In this post you’ll find:
📚 What’s Filling My Creative Well — books or articles lighting up our brains
⌨️ Behind the Scenes — some concrete tips for querying including: how to approximate books sales for good comps, spreadsheet templates, clarifying your genre, and selecting your agents
As always, thank you for being here, not just as readers, but as fellow story-lovers and co-dreamers of this beautiful, creative life.
xo,
Joanna & Evelyn
📚 What’s Filling My Creative Well
Currently reading:
The Watchmaker on Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley — I’m getting ready for this month’s “Read Like a Writer” book club! As a study of atmosphere, I am paying close attention to how setting, character, and language create an overarching mood.
Reminder! Our “Read Like a Writer” Book Club meeting is Sunday, October 26th at 8pm ET / 5pm PT. Discussion Qs and more info here.
Loved this article:
“Diane Keaton was Effortlessly Original” (The Ringer) — Diane Keaton was a whole-hearted example of authenticity. Brian Phillips describes her magnificence so well: “She accepted people on their terms, something not every artist manages. It made her seem doubly generous: first because she gave us her own delightful spin on how to be alive, and second because she invested no importance in whether we followed it.”
⌨️ The Adventures of Querying
If you read my welcome interview with Evelyn, you know that I recently started a querying adventure. I’ve queried agents before with different projects, and each time, I felt beaten down by the process, even when I ended up with an agent.
This time around, I want to do things differently. Instead of viewing querying as a war involving trenches, I want to see it as an adventure. A quest I am choosing. Adventures aren’t easy. They require the protagonist to face difficulties, understand themselves, and make courageous choices. I don’t expect querying to be unchallenging, but I won’t allow it to define my worth as a creative.
For this adventure, I separate my advice into two buckets: writer advice and coach advice.
The writing advice is the how-to of the querying process.
The creativity coaching advice considers the inner journey, including the emotions (doubt, shame, panic!) and thought patterns that arise while we go through this process. I’ll start with the writer’s side of things.
You can swim in pools of querying advice, even from agents you may want to query. I highly recommend Write Through It and Agents and Books by Kate McKean. But sometimes, agents miss the nitty-gritty of the writer’s process, so I wanted to share some of my concrete steps in case they help make an overwhelming experience a bit more accessible.
Picking your Agents
Make a spreadsheet. The columns I used include: agent’s name, agency, website address, MSWL link, and why they are a good match. Here’s a link to my spreadsheet template in case that’s helpful.
Hit the acknowledgements. I started my list with agents that represent novels similar to mine by looking them up in the acknowledgements section of the books or searching online.
Add agents from MSWL. I searched the MSWL site using genre filters to narrow down agents interested in my work. It’s an arduous process, but I added all the agents that would be a good enough match to my spreadsheet. I erred on the side of yes and then pruned and prioritized the list later. I aimed for 60-100 agents on my spreadsheet.
Read each agent’s website bio. Sometimes the MSWL is out of date, so I went to the agents’ websites. After reading about them, I rated each agent on a 1 to 5 scale based on the fit to my work. This helped me pick who to query in my earlier rounds. Don’t throw any agents off your list unless they explicitly don’t represent your type of work. It’s often a numbers game, so we need numbers.
Consider the agency. I went to the agency websites and reviewed their entire team to make sure the agent on my list was the best agent at the agency to represent me, since we can only query one agent from an agency at a time.
Follow your top agents/agencies on social media. Oftentimes, agents provide querying advice or share updated wishlists on their socials. This also helped me determine personality and interests in common.
Writing your Query Letter
Know your genre. Intentional genre-bending is awesome, but genre confusion might turn off an agent and frustrate our readers. This got sticky for me: was my work women’s fiction, historical fiction, book club fiction, or romance?! I focused on the audience that would be most satisfied with my work. For example, I wrote a big romance in my book, but it didn’t precisely follow the beat-by-beat expectations of the romance genre, so women’s fiction was a better place for it. My independent editor really helped me clarify this not only for my pitch, but in the final revisions of my novel.
Word count. Put it right up front. In fiction, we query when we have a finished, polished manuscript ready to go. My word count will help show agents that I understand the expectations of my genre. Here’s a nice graphic on word count by genre.
Pitch. The hook, the book, the cook. There are so many posts on writing awesome pitches. Check out Jane Friedman. She has some of the best book business insights. When I started, I appreciated Evelyn’s advice to write my pitch like it’s jacket copy. I researched the jackets of similar books to feel the rhythm and style of book marketing. I also found it helpful to ask my beta readers to describe my story in a few lines. It’s sometimes easy for them to see the bigger picture since I’ve spent years in all the details.
Comps. These are books that are similar to our books in the market. We want to pick comps that sold well, but not too well. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to book sale data, but let’s use what we do have - Amazon reviews. I went for books that had greater than 1,000 reviews on Amazon, which correlates with solid book sales. We can use other media like TV shows or movies as comps, but definitely include some books if possible. And it’s best if the books have been published in the last three years. To find comps, I love talking to booksellers, librarians, and other authors.
Bio/Qualifications. Don’t panic if you don’t have an MFA, awards, or connections. Being a member of a professional group counts (Historical Novel Society, Women’s Fiction Writers Association, SCBWI). I got involved with these groups, not only for this spot on my query, but to find creative connections, learn about craft, and access awards and scholarships.
Querying
Rounds. Many industry professionals advise authors not to query all their agents at one time, but to query in batches of 8-10 agents. This way, if any agents provide feedback, we can stop and revise our query or novel before going out to more agents. I was advised to wait one month between rounds.
Select your agents. Yay for a giant list. In picking which agents to query in my first round, I selected based on the best fit with my work and made sure to have a mix of well-established/senior agents and newer agents. New agents establishing their list can be a debut author’s sweet spot.
Submission. Submission instructions are on the agency websites. Most request that you submit via Query Tracker or email. Every agent has their own preferences, so I was sure to follow their requests, which can include: a query letter, synopsis, separate bio, one-sentence pitch/logline, and a specific number of pages/chapters. I tried not to get frustrated with the specific requests and imagined that it helped to determine the seriousness and commitment of the writer.
Remember that it is totally normal to hear nothing for well over a month. Most agents I queried listed their typical response time on their websites, on Query Tracker, or in their autoreply to the query. The estimated time frames ranged from 3 weeks to 5 months. Many stated that they only reply if interested, so if the time frame expires, consider it a no. Goodness, what an adventure.
Alright now, if reading all that made your heartbeat quicken, your stomach tighten, and your shoulders bunch, you are not alone. The emotional journey of querying needs to be honored. Stay tuned for my coaching perspective in my next newsletter.
Share your ideas and learnings.
Have you queried agents recently?
Is there any concrete advice you would add to this list?
What adventure are you on right now? 🏔️ 🤰🏻 ✍🏽 👩🎨
I’m querying too! Thanks for the tips. ❤️ I got a a MS request within 36 hours from a top agent and she read my MS and provided amazing, actionable feedback which I fixed but I asked if she would look again (because she passed and didn’t say revise and resubmit 🙈😬) but now I’m just getting rejections (okay at least 10 thus far). But I remain hopeful (or delusional 🤣🤪) that there will be one out there as it only takes one. And I’m only into my second month. Good luck. 🤞🏻🥰🫶🏻
Loved this post, and it most definitely resonated as I'm also immersed in the querying process. FWIW, before I went to spreadsheet (I'm sort of an Excel freak), I used large form art paper to create my initial list. (There was something about writing the names/agencies and 'ratings" --I used A/B/C--in different-colored glitter pens that made the task feel less onerous--and also served to cement the names on my list and in my memory.)
Additionally, I used the new AI Agent Matcher feature on Publishers Marketplace--where you feed your one sentence pitch and are delivered results based on that. It's imperfect, but you can see where there is repetition in names.
Finally, what I found--and I wonder if this is your experience? Is that there is often inconsistency of information on the agency's website as compared to the agent's Manuscript Wishlist and/or Publishers Marketplace home page. For example--some agents who say they are looking for historical fiction in one place might say in another, that they only want contemporary fiction.
Querying--as you detail so well in this post--is a process that requires commitment and care, and also one that is, as you say, a numbers game. I think it also requires a certain emotional detachment. My goal is to get to "100 Rejections" before I let it go....and the way I've come to see it (she says with a giggle) is that every rejection gets me a little closer to the goal.
And I think the other thing that has helped me achieve peace is knowing that I'm incredibly proud of my novel--regardless of what happens from here. (It took me a long time to get to this place--many drafts--lots of independent editors and great feedback.)
Wishing you success on your journey! Diana