#querying agents

A query is the name for what is essentially the application for finding an agent who wants to represent your book, or for a small publisher (who does not require agents) to acquire your book. The verb form is "querying," as in, "jesus fucking christ i hate querying so much."

The most important thing to do is make sure you're researching the submission guidelines for whoever you're submitting to. Almost all submissions will require sample pages and a query letter, which is essentially a cover letter for your book. Some will also require a synopsis and/or other stuff. Make sure you submit exactly what they ask for!

If you're writing a query letter, I would be happy to look at it and give you my (random one lady's) opinion. Just either plop it in my inbox (I'll respond publicly) or tag me in a post with it. This is the hardest part for sure, so it's okay to need help! If I'd gotten help on my first query, wow it would have been SO MUCH better omg.

For fiction: I would NOT query unless the project is not only finished, but edited. Best case, the agent/publisher likes the sample pages and asks you for the full manuscript. You need to be able to provide that instantly. I would say, get the book as close to done as you possibly can on your own. Query after alpha and beta readers, after doing as much editing as you can for free. Don't pay for an editor, but give them as polished a manuscript as you can.

Non-fiction often sells on proposal. Those are quite different and I know less about that!

Sample Pages

Some agents/publishers want the first 10 pages. Some the first 50. Some the first 3 chapters. Some the first 5k words. Send whatever they say they want, and don't get cute with it. When they say x number of pages, they mean double spaced, times new roman or similar standard font, one inch margins. If you're attaching a word document: include a header that has the book title and your name, plus page numbers in the footer. A google doc is not sufficient here, needs to be word. Sometimes they will ask for this to be pasted directly into the body of the email instead of attached. In that case, format your document into being double spaced, and then copy and paste that into the email body. Don't try to fudge their guidelines. They always mean (unless they explicitly say otherwise, which I've never seen) the first 10-50 pages. If you think your sample is better starting from page 70, too bad! If you have a prologue, include it (or cut it from the manuscript).

Query Letter

This is the hardest part of querying or submitting by far. Everyone struggles with these so don't feel bad if your first one or three or nineteen drafts suck. Essentially, the role of the query letter is to make the agent/editor excited about your premise, optimistic about your prose, and confident that you understand your genre and the book publishing marketplace. If you say things like "no one has ever written a book like this!" for example, they will know that you don't actually know a lot about books or publishing, because that's basically never going to be true. You want to sound clear, concise, interesting, talented, and normal to work with.

The basic format looks like this: Salutation, meta data with little hook, plot summary up through the climax, about you, the end. The whole thing should be 400 words or under.

In detail:

Dear Agent/Editor [spell their name correctly omg], I'm pleased to send you THE GILMORE GIRLS [your title is always in all caps], an 80,000 word book club women's fiction novel about a mother and daughter who act more like best friends--for better and for worse--that will appeal to fans of [comparable title, or comps. give 2 that are recent books (last 5 years) in your genre that did well but aren't mega famous. Don't comp Emily Henry or Sally Rooney, think more Ashley Herring Blake, format these book titles in Caps Every Word and Italics]. I am sending this to you due your interest in [something personal about them, like they are seeking stories about complex women in family dynamics or whatever. Do your research on their publicly stated wish list, change this for each place/person, don't be a creep like "based on the pictures of your child i found on your private instagram"]. [this paragraph is where you summarize the book. you can go up to the climax. If the book is in dual POV, introduce both POVs here]. Lorelai Gilmore's life is finally on track. It took a long time to get her feet under her and establish herself in her career, life, and home after having a kid at sixteen, but now at 32, she's finally found her rhythm. Her daughter, Rory, is a brilliant kid, Lorelai runs the inn she used to clean, and she lives in the cutest, oddest town in Connecticut, Stars Hallow. But when Rory gets into a prestigious private school, but isn't offered any financial aid, Lorelai realizes the only way to help Rory have the best life possible is to borrow money from her extremely wealthy and controlling parents--the ones she ran away from when Rory was only a baby. Lorelai will have to decide between her own happiness and autonomy and Rory's future--a future that's put into question when Rory starts caring more about a new guy in town than school, and Lorelai's own boy problems threaten to destabilize everything she's built in Stars Hallow. [about me] I have a degree in creative writing from Tumblr University. I live in California and spend my time walking my dog and gardening. [if you have published anything else, put it here. otherwise, just wrap it up]. GILMORE GIRLS will be my debut novel. Thank you very much for your time, and I hope to hear from you, Your Name

This example is only 270 words, so you can see there's a bit more room for expanding on the plot.

Guess who's back from the dead!

Jokes aside, I truly do feel terrible for going on hiatus without saying anything, and then I come back and see that I've hit 2k (which btw is absolutely amazing and left me shell-shocked) and that just made me feel worse for leaving unannounced. So, here's everything that's been going on:

(click read more if you want to learn about my experience at my first writer's workshop & pitching to an agent ++ publishing updates for The Traitor's Throne)

If you DON'T want to read more: long story short I'm back and will revamp this blog Monday onwards.

Any updates on the books you’re writing?

Hi, thanks so much! I’m so glad you enjoy my posts, and thanks for your interest in my book too!

I’m currently in the process of querying agents to see if they’d be interested in representing my book and trying to sell it to publishers, and to be entirely honest it’s not going great. Publishing is a tough business to break into, but I’m holding out hope and by and large I’ve had kind and polite responses even when agents aren’t interested in my work. When something so personal to you is on the line it can be difficult to remind yourself that agents are very busy people and by not responding to you they don’t intend to be rude or to ignore you, they simply have a lot of submissions to look through and only a very small percentage of them will be offered representation.

In terms of the actual writing itself I’ve finished the detailed outline of the second book in the trilogy and begun writing my first full draft. I’m hoping to write my initial rough draft by hand to stop me from editing as I go, and then type everything up to create my second draft. I’m really excited about the progress and I’m looking forward to getting deeper into this book and pushing my characters to new limits as well as further expanding on my worldbuilding.

I'm currently querying agents and building a list of books "similar" to mine to show the market and competitors. I have a handful that sort of work, but I'm having a really hard time finding more.

I'm begging you, good people of Tumblr, please help me.

Details about my book:

- Illustrated anime-style

- Sci-fi / historical fiction

- A serf discovers he's related to the king, who had him grow up a serf to protect him

- Character-driven plot where half of it is the 17-YO protagonist bonding with his new royal family while discovering their sci-fi secrets

- Takes place in the medieval-based fictional kingdom (no magic or fantasy elements, but some sci-fi elements)

- There are digital, holographic creatures a militia is tasked to fight

- Clones [read with the "aliens" meme in mind lol]

- Mirror motifs

I am officially being repped by Quressa Robinson at NLA. I have a book agent!!! It’s thrilling and nerve-wracking and amazing and terrifying. 

I can’t share the actual query letter yet, but I can share how it all came about.  It’s a long insane story that is so crazy it will seem like fiction, but as this post proves...it’s not!  (Stay tuned for a word of advice at the bottom of this post!

Link to Part 2 and Part 3

1. I wrote a book.  Obviously, right? I’ve been writing for years, but nothing prepared me for the journey that has been my manuscript. We’re talking two years of tears, late nights, early mornings, writing on the train, writing on the bus, printing out 400 pages at work, highlighting,  and note taking only to have beta readers dislike it and having to go back to the drawing board. But finally in July in the year of our lord 2017, over July. 4th week off from work, I finished my book. It still needed work, but I felt strongly that it was good as I could get it and I needed an agent and then an editor to push it to the finish line. 

2. I Researched Agents. I sent my book out to beta readers and used that awful time while I waited for opinions to research agents.  I had a spreadsheet of dozens of names, what they were looking for, their query requirements and why I wanted to query them. That’s very important. Once you query the chances are you will lose your choices. As in, if you only get one agent offer you’re probably going to take that agent.  Querying someone that you don’t really want to work with is a mistake. My book is my baby. I have not given more to anything in this world than what I have given to my book/ I wanted an agent who would love, fight and lobby for my book as hard as I am.

3. I Wrote An Amazing Query Letter OK. I know that it’s extremely egotistical to call my query letter amazing, but my query letter was amazing. How do I know this? Because I used the F-word in the opening line. :-)

 I wrote a letter. I thought it was good. My closest writing friend thought it was good. Then we sent it to an associate who is a published author and she said it was awful. I started again from complete scratch. And wrote in the third person. (I did NOT write from the POV of my character. It was in third person) BUT as if my main character was writing about herself. My main character would curse. She would have the attitude of “this is what I’m willing to tell you at this time and if it’s not enough...too damn bad.”

4. I Wrote An OK Synopsis From the beginning of my life, I have hated synopses. I hated having to tell my mom what happened in school. I hated having to sum up books in middle school, explain historical events in high school and write script coverage for internships in college. I hate summaries. I hate summarizing. So when I tell you I hate my synopsis and think it’s dry and uninteresting believe me. Luckily, I had Charlee, my close writing friend to chime in and say this is good, this makes no sense and that’s not even a word! 

5. I Read the First Fifty Pages of My Manuscript 100 Times Agents have different requirements. Some want a query and fifty pages. Others want a query, a summary, and fifty pages. Or they want the Query, the first 1-3 chapters, and a summary, or a query, the first 1-3 chapters and nothing else. Some agents have forms that ask questions like “If you could describe your character in three words what would those words be?” or “what are three comparable books to your manuscript?” Other agents just want an email with “QUERY: MANUSCRIPT TITLE” as the subject and a simple query. 

I did my best to check grammar, spelling, etc in the first fifty pages. But I went to NYC public school so my grammar SUCKS. Every time I sent the pages to a new agent I would find something else and cringe. Not just cringe but decide I would never get an agent simply because I don’t have the ability to properly check myself. Agents do not expect you to be an editor, but you should try your BEST to hand in pages that are as clean and as ready as possible.  Do not half-ass this process. 

Side Note: A Word of Advice about Querying. 

If you only listen to one tip from me let it be this...Make sure you get the agent and the agent requirements right. Let's face it, you are probably not going to write an individualized email unless you actually have something specific. I knew that one agent was as big of a Game of Thrones fan as myself and I was querying as Thrones was coming back for its seventh season, so I mentioned her love of GOT as a reason I wanted to query her. 

But the truth of the matter is that I don’t go to writing conventions, I haven’t participated in pitch sessions so there was no reason that any of these agents would know me.It was mostly a form, run of the mill, same for everyone,  query. And many writing tip sites will tell you to add a personal note, etc. But it’s my opinion that it’s better to get to the point than to be insincere. Besides if your Query is good it won't matter if you used a line of the email to kiss the agents ass.