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Querying often feels like an uphill battle. If you are currently in the querying trenches, you might be facing rejection after rejection, not understanding what you're doing wrong or even if agents are reading your sample pages at all.

It's well understood that now is an especially challenging time to be a querying author. As a former literary agency employee, I want to do everything I can to support you in this process and help you boost your chances of success when presenting your manuscript to literary agents.

So, if you've been querying for a while to no avail and are worried that agents might not even be reading your manuscript at all, today I'm going to go through five of my top tips for getting agents to read and respond to your query’s sample pages. I want to provide some insight into how agents think about and evaluate the sample pages portion of your query package and illuminate what they're really looking for in those pages.

1. Write a Strong Book Blurb

The first way to get agents to read your query’s sample pages (and hopefully the full manuscript) is to write a strong book blurb. The book blurb is the section of the query letter where you are describing your book’s content or plot, and it's often the first thing that an agent reads through before deciding if they want to go into the query sample pages or not — that's why it is so important.

Some agents read the sample pages no matter what, or they might jump into the sample pages before reading the query letter. But, in general, most agents will review the book blurb before looking at the pages. If they read that blurb and it doesn't sound particularly enticing to them, it's less likely that they're going to go into those sample pages. That's why you want to make sure you are presenting your book accurately and ultimately sparking the agent's interest to look at the manuscript.

2. Submit the Correct Length and Format

I know that it's really frustrating and frankly just annoying to have to follow each individual agent’s specific query guidelines and formatting instructions, but it is important for you to pay attention to these — otherwise, they might not read your query or it might not go to the right place.

First, when you are sending sample pages along with your query letter, make sure that it is the exact length that the agent is requesting. This differs from agent to agent — some request the first 10 pages, some request the first 50 pages, some request just the first chapter, some request the first three chapters. Make sure that the sample pages you send to each agent match what they are requesting. And when you're calculating the pages in your manuscript, make sure that you're following the standard manuscript format for traditional publishing, which is:

12-point font
Standard margins
Double-spaced

In addition, some agents might ask you to upload the manuscript into their query tracking system. Typically, they would want that as either a Word or a PDF document, or they might ask you to paste it in a field or paste it in an email just below your query letter. Make it easy for the agent to read your manuscript by following these instructions to a T, and make sure you stick to the standard file types and the standard formatting.

Remember that your query sample pages should stand out because of the quality of the storytelling, not because something is off with the style of the manuscript or the format that it's in. Sticking to the standards here and following instructions really are going to be your best bet.

3. Send the Opening Pages

My next tip for getting agents to read your manuscript is to send the opening pages. Some authors want to send agents a portion of the manuscript that comes somewhere in the middle — perhaps this is where they feel the manuscript showcases their writing really well, or they think that it's a climactic scene that will pull the agent in. But really, it's best to send the very first pages of your manuscript.

Otherwise, it will be more difficult for the agent to properly evaluate your work because if you send them an excerpt that's from somewhere in the middle of your book, they're not going to have any context for the characters, the setting, or the main point of conflict. Part of what they are assessing when they are reading through the query’s sample pages is your ability to draw a reader into your world and your story, and that really can only be done in the opening pages. Ultimately, the agent wants to experience your story as a reader fresh to the book would.

You may have material at the beginning of your manuscript and be wondering if that should be included in your query sample pages, specifically if you have a prologue scene of some kind. Typically, that would be included in the sample pages unless the agent specifically says not to include prologues in their guidelines.

4. Polish Your Prose

If agents really like the premise of your book that you describe in the query letter, but then they hop down into the sample pages and see a lot of grammatical and spelling errors, they're unlikely to continue with the manuscript.

Agents completely understand that what you are sending them is a draft of the manuscript and it is not a final product by any means. A typo here and there is not going to be a deal breaker. However, if the errors are numerous and very noticeable, they can end up undermining your authority as an author and erode the effectiveness of your storytelling, which is the last thing you want.

Remember that in addition to evaluating how strong your story is, agents are evaluating the manuscript excerpt to see how strong of a writer you are. So, you want to show them your best possible work and how strong your writing ability is. It's a good idea to aim to make your manuscript — especially the excerpt that you use as the query’s sample pages — on par with the quality of a traditionally published book, which means as close to error-free as possible. There shouldn't be any glaring technical sentence issues in those pages.

If you struggle with grammar and spelling, I recommend working on that prior to sending out your queries, because agents are looking for authors who have mastered the technical craft of their prose.

5. Know When to Revise

The point of the sample pages that you share with literary agents is to entice them to request the full manuscript and want to read more. So, if you are getting rejection after rejection after rejection with no one requesting the full manuscript, there may come a point at which you want to re-evaluate those opening pages to see if they are as strong as they can be. Are there ways you can better hook agents and readers into your story?

I specifically recommend taking this step if you have gotten a significant number of rejections and no full requests, because that means something is preventing the agent from wanting to read more of the manuscript. It could be the query letter or it could be the sample pages, so revising either your query letter or your sample pages — or even both —could help you change the tides a little bit and hopefully pique an agent's interest.

On the flip side, if you've gotten a few full requests that then turned into rejections, that could be a sign that your opening pages actually are strong, because agents are requesting the full manuscript. However, there could be an issue deeper into the manuscript that is causing agents to disengage.

If you've determined that it could be a good idea to revise your opening pages, return to them with a few questions in mind:

Do you introduce the protagonist in a way that makes us want to learn more about them?
Do you describe the setting sufficiently?
Most importantly, do you establish a strong point of tension or conflict? What is going to make the agent want to read more?

If you can't answer that last question, then they're probably not going to want to read more. That's why conflict and tension are so important to establish in the sample pages.

I hope this helped you better understand how agents evaluate the query sample pages and determine if your manuscript is something they want to read more of. Thanks so much for reading and happy writing!