Notes on Querying

Welcome back to Out of Practice! Thanks for being here.

I’ve been on an unplanned hiatus from Substack (and social media generally) since my life has been pretty chaotic lately—I moved into a new house, transitioned to a new role at work, and had some assorted personal stuff going on. I’ve been trying to find my way back to a routine, and while I’m not quite there yet, I’m getting closer. S starts kindergarten soon (wild!!), so hopefully we will settle into a new routine together.

Since I missed June’s and July’s newsletters, I’ll talk about the topics I’d selected for those months (why I love revision and defining characters via economics) at a later date. My topic for August remains, as planned, querying! More on that below.

Earlier this summer I had some headshots taken for the first time, and I love the way they turned out—I am not a person who enjoys having their picture taken, but Joanna Tillman was so much fun to work with, and really put me at ease. Definitely check out her portfolio if you’re looking for a Baltimore area photographer!

In other exciting professional news: back in April I was waitlisted for a residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and when a spot opened up recently, I got in! I’ll be Nebraska City for two weeks working on a new draft of Sibling WIP.

I’m so grateful for the opportunity and can’t wait to dig into my novel while I’m there. I’ll share a little about my experience in a future newsletter.

I unfortunately haven’t been reading much lately (just the books below and my trusty Lord of the Rings audiobooks, which are pretty much in constant rotation especially when the insomnia hits), but I’m hoping to remedy that when I’m at KHN.

My goals for the summer were to 1) finish edits on the first section of Sibling WIP and 2) share the opening of that book with my agent. I did make headway on those edits, but I have yet to send any pages over to my agent. I’m not behind in the grand scheme of things, since I’m still revising WASP’S NEST with my editor (and my agent can’t sell another book until my debut comes out), but I’m looking forward to getting deeper into my current WIP.

I’d like to finish a full revision of Sibling WIP while I’m at KHN, and finally share the book with my agent sometime in early fall. The draft I have now is about 50k, and definitely has major holes. My goal is to patch those holes (several key scenes need to be written still) and overhaul some other things—most significantly, I’ve swapped the birth order of the siblings, so I’m looking forward to finding out how that change will ripple throughout the book.

So…querying! That much anticipated, much dreaded stage of traditional publication.

Just to contextualize everything I’m going to say here, I’m not positioning myself as an authority on querying. So much success in publishing depends on privilege, professional connections, and pure luck. I’m just one person with one experience to draw on. For more context, I spent an unusually short time querying (about two months). So take anything I say with the appropriate amount of salt.

I started querying in the last few days of August, 2023, and sent 33 queries in total. All the agents I reached out to represented US authors of contemporary, upmarket, and/or literary fiction. These agents had a range of experience, from seasoned agents to newer agents, agents who repped my favorite authors as well as agents who hadn't made a sale yet (but were part of established agencies with the industry connections and mentorship that entails).

From my initial list of about 100 agents, I narrowed it down to 50. Then I sent letters in batches of five or ten.1 I did something that a lot of people advise against, and had a lot of queries out at once. I was very confident in my query package, so I felt that was a calculated risk I was willing to take. It could have gone another way, but I did start to get positive responses pretty quickly (partial or full requests, referrals within agencies, and personalized rejections). My positive reply stat (partial or full requests) according to QueryTracker was 18%, with the average being 5%.

Like I said, luck is a big factor—I worked really hard on my book and my query letter, but I’m not going to pretend finding an agent so quickly was entirely, or even primarily, due to merit. I happened to reach out to the right agent at the right time.

In terms of the factors that were under my control, here’s what I’d recommend.

Preparation

This is going to sound basic, and it is, but if I could give one piece of advice to not-yet-querying writers, it would be: make sure you’re ready. Seriously ready. I’ve heard a lot of writers talk about diving into querying too quickly and regretting it. You only have one shot at a first impression.

Before you send any queries, you should be:

Prior to sending my first query, I spent two years writing and revising the book. I also spent about a year of that time working on my query package (query letter, synopsis, and opening pages) as well as learning about the querying process and the publishing industry generally. Whenever I felt particularly stuck on a plot point or a scene, I would read articles, blog posts, and agent interviews, or listen to podcasts and youtube videos, etc. It helped me feel like I was making progress even when the creative side of things was stalled. I also began compiling a spreadsheet of agents during that period.

I’m a fan of spreadsheets in general, and I found them invaluable while querying. At the very least, you’ll want a spreadsheet with columns for: Agent Name, Agency, Date Queried, and additional columns to keep track of the following responses: Partial manuscript requested, Full manuscript requested, Pass, Offer.

Make sure you pay close attention to agency guidelines and record those in your notes as well. Some agents only want five pages, some want five chapters, some agencies require a specific format for all query letters, some will tell you you can query another agent if one of their agents passes while others says a pass from one agent is a pass from the entire agency. I made notes of all of these particulars in one of my spreadsheets, and starting the process early made it much less stressful when it came time to actually send queries.

Timing

Writers are often told not to query during certain months of the year: Summer, especially August (when basically everyone in publishing is on vacation), and then during the winter holidays. I think that’s generally good advice, but I would focus on the quality of your work rather than timing.3 If your book is ready, it’s ready. Better to take your time making sure your query package is in the best possible shape than to rush to query before a certain date.

Resources

Here are some of the places I’d recommend starting if you’d like to learn more about querying and publishing in general.

If you have any questions about the querying process, I would be more than happy to try to answer them—or, more likely, point you in the direction of actual experts. I’m planning on pulling some more advice and resources together into a future post—I got a few questions about comps and longlines, and I ran out of time (and space), so that will be coming later!

If you’re querying now or in future, I hope you’re able to find an agent who shares your vision for your book and your career. Rooting for you. ❤️

If you’re a fan of medieval literature, stories that showcase the depth of how weird and fucked up and beautiful love can be, and characters being unhinged, I cannot recommend The Decameron on Netflix more highly. Set during in Italy during the Black Death, and inspired by Boccaccio’s work of the same name, it’s dark and funny and very moving.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading! Until next time,

K