#querying tips

Author Chantel Pereira, aka barrierspark, chats with us about querying tips and success. Her upcoming novel, Coltrane’s Cross, is a magical children’s fantasy series already being praised as the next Harry Potter.

What was your research process like?

I honestly didn’t dabble enough in researching the first time I sent out queries. I definitely knew from my research what a query letter was and how to draft one, but I didn’t take in the information I should have that would have helped me write a successful one sooner. As I became more serious about my writing, and after I received my first inevitable rejections, I really took a step back and re-evaluated what I wanted for my books, what I felt like they could achieve, what I wanted for my future writings, and what I wanted out of this process. After knowing what direction I wanted, I researched every possible agency before sending any further queries. Querying an agent is not something that should be taken lightly - this is the person who is going to be championing your hard work. You need to be 100% happy with who you may end up with, and the only way of being certain is by doing your research. I think a lot of people run the risk of accepting the first agent who says yes. Which can be scary if it’s not the right arrangement for both parties.

What did you look out for when picking agents to query?

I looked out not only for what types of books they represented (i.e. reader age, genre, and possible crossover genres I also identified with my book), but I also looked for what they weren’t looking for, what authors they already worked with, if they had a Manuscript Wishlist, and generally agents tend to post a small description about themselves, the books they love most, and what inspired them to enter their line of work. Sometimes that small bit of information can tell you so much about whether they could be interested in what you’ve written and your personal style.

Where did you start looking for Agents?  How did you keep track of which agencies had special query instructions?

At first, I used the Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market, a poorly-drawn chart in my notebook, and a lot of coffee. I’m a bit of a Type A personality, meaning my graph was organized by things like how many sample pages they’d like, books they covered that I recognized, trends of what they were looking for based on their Manuscript Wishlist (if they had one posted either on their personal agent page or Twitter). As time went on, I found an incredible tool of a site called Query Tracker. It was essentially what I was physically writing on paper but organized in a more accurate online database. More accurate as updates happened quicker there than in my outdated Market book reprinted once a year.

What was the hardest thing about writing your query letter? What tips do you have for others?

I think the hardest thing about writing my query letter was a mixture of me trying to keep myself composed so I didn’t word-gush about how much I love my books to them, and also perhaps striking the confidence to just write that letter. It was a bit terrifying for me because this has been a dream I’ve wanted since I was eight. But I think it’s important to keep your query letter brief, clear, and professional. Of course, depending on the type of book you’re writing, I’ve read that the query letter can reflect the writing style you’ve used in order to cement what your book is all about, but I found I had a lot of luck keeping my query professional. My other two important tips - besides doing your research - are proofread, proofread, proofread, and send small batches first. If there is a glaring typo in something as serious as your query, very likely that agent may pass before reading your sample. And what I mean by sending queries in small batches is that say you send to five and they all immediately reply with a rejection, your problem may not necessarily lie in your manuscript. It could be your query letter. It’s always best to have an editor or beta reader give it a fresh read. Sometimes other can catch things we simply can’t with our own eyes.

What motivated you the most through the rejections?

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have an incredible support system through my friends, family, boyfriend, and my writing partners I’ve gathered over the years. Who knows, it may have all just boiled down to my stubbornness, but I really felt I had something that needed to be seen. I won’t lie, the rejections were incredibly hard on me. I took them a lot worse than I imagined I would, especially because I knew this was an inevitable part of being in this industry. But I think failure is so important and it took me a while to realize that. I just took failure and failure and not as the opportunity it was to get stronger. So after a while, my motivation was that every rejection was making me into the stronger writer I needed to be to make this book/series happen. Keeping my brain occupied with other healthy hobbies - like hiking - helped too.

Do you have any other tips for querying writers?

Keep going. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be tough. Each one is going to take a long time to write and you will stay up late into the night perfecting this one-page letter, but this is you fighting for your future. Don’t take it lightly.

More about Chantel:

Chantel’s blog, barrierspark, is an online scrapbook of her book/planning process, complete with writing tips, aesthetic photos, poetry, and snippets! Follow Chantel here for publishing updates on her series, Coltrane’s Cross. Here is a snippet from book one in the series:

Querying 101: Don’t Schedule Your Queries for the Holidays!

   I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me, just how many queries every literary agent in this country receives on a daily basis. It follows, then, that the end of the year is not a great time for catching the attention of any agent, since they’ve got a year’s worth of unsolicited queries to sort through. 

As a result, I’m going to slow my query train down until the new year (many agents aren’t…