5 Tips for First-Time Querying Authors
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You've spent the last months writing your manuscript and you finally have a finished draft. Now you're getting ready to pursue the next phase of your book publishing journey, which is querying literary agents.
But querying for the first time can be incredibly intimidating. So, today, I want to go over my top tips for authors who are querying for the very first time to make sure that you know what to expect going into the querying process and that you set yourself up for the best possible chances of success in getting an offer of representation from a literary agent.
1. Follow Agents’ Instructions
This seems basic, I know, but you would truly be shocked at how many queries I reviewed when I worked at a literary agency that just simply disregarded the agency's stated requirements. Ultimately, not following the instructions might come across as unprofessional, and in the worst case it might result in your query getting deleted or ending up in the wrong place without being reviewed at all.
Every agent or agency has a specific mechanism for how they can receive queries. Some use a form website — the most common is QueryTracker — while others will accept queries sent directly via email. You want to make sure you're submitting your query through the process that the agent or agency states on their website. If you send it to an email address and they only accept queries via the form, it's unlikely that's going to get read, and vice versa.
Also, every agent or agency is going to specify what specific materials they need in addition to your standard query letter. That might be a synopsis document of a certain length. They will also have specific requirements for how to submit the sample of your manuscript — some ask, for example, for the first ten pages, while others ask for the first chapter.
Make sure you are following all of their instructions to a T. I know it may be tedious that every agent has different requirements and you have to use different websites and send different materials for each one, but I promise this is a critical step and it is going to only increase your chances of being successful with your queries. It will be worth it to take those extra five minutes to make sure you are including everything that the agent needs — otherwise, you'll be shooting yourself in the foot.
2. Polish Your Manuscript
My next tip for first-time querying authors is to polish your manuscript prior to querying. This step is absolutely critical, and it's one I see many new authors overlook entirely. It's so important that you present the literary agents the strongest possible version of your manuscript.
Traditional publishing is, as you probably know, extremely competitive. So, the more polished your manuscript already is, the better chance you will have at piquing a literary agent’s interest. It is common for you to go through rounds of editing with your literary agent prior to submitting to publishing houses, and you are going to go through rounds of editing with your editor at your publishing house, but that doesn't mean you should send literary agents the very first draft you've written.
Agents are more likely to take on a manuscript that is close to being publishable versus one that needs a lot of work to get there. That's why I want you to do a lot of that work upfront before you even query. Remember that agents don't get paid until they make you a book deal, and that's when they receive a 15% commission of the advance that the publisher is paying you. So, from their perspective, if they have to put in a ton of work on your manuscript before they're able to get paid for it, that's not going to be as appealing as a manuscript that needs less work and is closer to getting ready to go out to publishers — because of course they want to get paid ASAP, right?
That's not to say that agents aren't willing to work with you in an editorial capacity. Most agents enjoy that process and want to be editorially involved. But think of the metaphor of buying a home; it is typically more enticing to buy a home that's already renovated and you can move right in versus a home that is a fixer upper and requires a lot of work to be livable. That's the difference between a very polished manuscript and one that isn't quite ready to go out to publishers yet.
So, how do you go about polishing your manuscript? I recommend two approaches:
Make sure you're self-editing rigorously. Go back through your manuscript draft, not only to look for typos or grammatical errors or areas where you could enhance the prose, but also look at the story overall. Did you develop this character's arc in the way you wanted to? Are there opportunities to improve the pacing?
Get external feedback. It can be hard to see issues in your own manuscript, which is why I also highly, highly recommend working with someone else to get feedback on your book — whether that is a beta reader or a professional editor or a critique partner.
3. Expect and Accept Rejection
The earlier you can come to accept rejection as a necessary but hard component of your publishing journey, the better off you're going to be when querying for the first time. Every single author gets rejected at one point or another throughout their career. I promise you, anyone that you see on the shelf in Barnes & Noble has been rejected at some point.
Too many times, I hear from authors who are querying for the first time who are discouraged because they got ten rejections from literary agents and they're wondering if they should just give up because their book sucks and they'll never get published. Now, in the grand scheme of things, ten queries is really not all that many. Many authors go through dozens of queries before getting an agent to request the full manuscript. And the truth is that you are going to get way more rejections than positive responses to your queries because that's just how the numbers game of querying shakes out.
Remember that literary agents are highly selective, and they're looking for projects that they specifically connect with and that they feel confident they can sell to a publishing house. Just because you're not the right fit for that agent doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your story; it just means you need to query more to find the right fit. It really is just like dating, which is why you should cast a very wide net and hopefully one will bite.
Do not let the rejections deter you!
4. Be Patient
Many authors who are querying for the first time are overwhelmed and discouraged by the sheer amount of time you're going to spend waiting to hear back from literary agents. I get it; it totally sucks to wait weeks or even months to hear back from literary agents about if they're interested in your story or not. But this is unfortunately the norm in the traditional publishing space.
There really is nothing you can do about the waiting game. You just have to be patient and get through it. You might get upset because maybe you heard from a friend or you saw someone online mention that they heard back from an agent within a few days, and you're still waiting with only crickets. But know truly that the time it takes for an agent to get back to you really has no bearing on whether or not they're interested in your query. It really just comes down to when they get around to reviewing your query, and if they haven't responded yet, it is highly likely that they just simply haven't had a chance to read it yet.
I saw an agent post her query stats on Twitter the other day, and she was getting hundreds of queries per day. Obviously, that's going to take a long time to get through, and at the agency I worked at, we always had hundreds of unread queries in the query inbox. Any good agent wants to take the time to review your query and give it the time and attention it deserves, so it just takes time for them to get to yours — especially when they have other competing priorities with their own clients and book deals that they are trying to negotiate.
5. Get Feedback
My final tip for first-time querying authors is to get feedback. If querying isn't going the way that you expected or wanted it to, it could be beneficial to take a break and see if you can get feedback on your materials from someone you trust — specifically on your query letter itself or on your manuscript.
It can be helpful to get another pair of eyes on these materials to see if you could possibly make them stronger if you're only getting rejections from literary agents. It could be the case that the language you're using in the query letter to pitch the book just isn't making it sound as enticing as it actually is, and you could improve that language to pique an agent's interest. Or perhaps the opening scene of your manuscript is slow and not engaging, and that's preventing agents from wanting to read more of the manuscript. These are two issues I see all the time with clients I work with.
Once you make tweaks to your query letter and/or your manuscript, it could be a good idea to query another batch of agents and see if they respond differently to the new material. That said, I don't recommend sending out the revised query letter or manuscript to an agent who has already rejected you, because typically it is only acceptable to re-query the same agent with the same book if you have substantially revised the entire manuscript such that it's pretty much a different book altogether. So, if you've only made smaller tweaks here and there to the pitch or a couple of scenes, then you'll want to go out to totally different agents.
I hope this helped you better understand what to expect when you send your first query letter and how to best set yourself up for success. I know how anxiety-inducing querying for the first time can be, and I want to support and help you through it.
Thanks so much for reading and happy querying!