(2) Querying 101

don't worry, it's not that scary!

When I first started asking followers what they wanted to hear advice on, or topics they thought I should cover, one was a recurring theme: querying!

Which makes total sense because querying is honestly one of the scariest, most grueling parts of trying to put your book into the world. I’ve done it twice (technically three, if you count me querying a terrible dystopian book at 17 where I advertised it as “the next big thing in YA Dystopia! 🤦🏻‍♀️). While both legit times ended with offers of rep, there are so many things I wish I knew before I signed with my first agent. That may be a topic for another newsletter.

So, let’s do the first installment of a deep dive into what querying is and some of the basics! Without further ado:

What is Querying?

It may sound like a silly question, but sometimes when I start talking about publishing, the lay person doesn’t always know what it is. And why would they? They are probably living blissfully unaware and at peace. They do not know the fear of seeing “Query Reply” pop up in your inbox or the words “I didn’t connect with your characters”. The innocence…

Querying is the process of submitting your book to agents who will choose whether or not to represent you and your book. They will review your package, request partials, fulls, and hopefully, make an offer of representation and you have an agent! Woo!

When Should I Query?

There are a few different answers, depending on where you are in your career, but the most common answer is when your book is DONE and REVISED, and you feel it is the best it can possibly be.

While I know there is always going to be some temptation to pitch your book when you’re almost there, or get out there quickly, assuming no one will request the full — you simply never know. You owe it to yourself to get your book polished and the strongest it can be before an agent looks at it. Of course, some agents are open to resubmitting, but that is typically after extensive revisions. Fixing your typos and cleaning things up a bit is not nearly extensive enough for an agent to reconsider.

Like a job interview, you want to put your best foot forward with an agent. Agents also want to pick up an author who shows they do really care about their book and aren’t just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping someone takes a chance on them.

You do NOT need to pay someone to edit your book before you query. You can, but it is absolutely not required. Some people will insist that you must pay exorbitant fees to editors in order to even think about querying. I have never done this and all of my close friends who are agented and have deals have never done this. If you’re a thorough editor yourself, have a good group of CPs or beta readers (which is maybe another topic for another MarloweMail!) who help you hone your craft, you are likely in a good place.

How to Query

There are a couple of different ways that agents will accept queries. Back in the day, it was a lot of snail mail and having to print your pages to send to agents, but in the online era, things are much more organized.

Query Tracker

QT is a website designed to help you submit, track, and manage queries and research agents. It’s genuinely awesome. You can use it for free, but there is a premium option that costs about $25 a year, and it grants you access to query timelines (where you can see where you fall in an agents queue) and loads of other interesting data. It also serves as a great one-stop-shop for info on agents and agencies. They will link to an agent’s Query Manager form (where you submit your info), email address, Publisher’s Marketplace page, website, etc.

Online Form

Some agents/agencies will have their own online forms on their websites. This will also be listed/linked on their QueryTracker profiles so they are easy to find.

Good Old Fashioned Email!

Many agents still do email queries and sometimes agencies as a whole have shared inboxes that they can all go through.

Always research agents and how to submit to them according to their guidelines. This leads nicely into what may be the literal most important part of preparing to query…

Vetting Agents

If you’ve never heard the phrase “no agent is better than a bad agent”, I will shout it from the rooftops gladly. Your agent is your advocate in publishing. They go to bat for you, they negotiate your contracts, they sell your books. A bad agent can let your books languish on sub, which renders them mostly dead and unable to be subbed again by a different agent (there are exceptions to this, and sometimes those books come back as a second book on a contract). A bad agent can land you in hot water and burn bridges on your behalf. A bad agent can really mess with your mental health and how you view your career (ask me how I know!!).

You and your book deserve the best teammate you can find. In a day where anyone can put “Agent” in their bio and open to queries, it’s more important than ever to vet and research agents well. Here are some of the big things I advise people to look out for (a non-exhaustive list):

Good Sales in your Genre

Making sure an agent sells in your genre is a good indicator that they have solid connections in your sphere of the business. They know what’s selling, what’s hot, who to submit to, and how to get those deals done. This is also helpful from a craft perspective because if they understand the market of your genre well, they can help you grow as an author and make your books stronger.

This can be easily looked up on Publisher’s Marketplace, where agents and pubs report their deals. It is not a free service, but they do offer day passes. I would definitely recommend either investing in a day pass to do all your research in one fell swoop, or asking a friend who pays for PM to look up agents for you and get info!

Client Happiness

This one can be harder to suss out, but client happiness is an incredibly important factor to ask around for. An agent may be selling a client’s books, but is that client happy with how things are going? Many authors are happy to share their experiences with certain agents and answer questions (I always am!).

I think part of this is also about what you are looking for in an agent. There are some agents out there that we consider “sharks”, and they’re really savvy business people and get those flashy deals, but perhaps they aren’t as tender with clients who are maybe a bit more sensitive or anxious. There are some agents who are absolutely delightful people but are not very good business people. Some fall in the middle. Some agents are totally hands off when it comes to the creative process, while others are very in the weeds with clients and their books.

Understanding as best as you can what kind of partner you’re looking for is deeply helpful in guiding you forward.

Good Reputation

So, this one is harder to figure out on just a cursory look, but Google agents. Ask other writers in your circles what they know. Check out WriterBeware. You may discover agents were embroiled in some kind of scandal that they aren’t advertising or trying to cover up, expecting people to not Google them.

The business has many wonderful agents, who genuinely love books and are always hustling hard for their clients. However, there are a lot of agents who are not reputable, have one of said scandals hiding behind them, or have a string of unhappy clients and negative experiences.

Again, a non-exhaustive list, but some of the most common red flags I spot in agents are below:

A Few Agent Red Flags

Lack of Sales

This may mean they lack strong connections and relationships to editors and publishing houses. It could also mean that they are not as proactive about getting traction on books on sub, for example, just sending the pitch out and letting it… sit. It could also mean they just aren’t a strong sales person.

A caveat here is that newer agents may not appear to have many sales, and that can mean a few things that are not necessarily red flags. Publishing is slow and some announced deals sit in purgatory for a while, but the agents have them. For many, they are still starting out in their career, but have the makings of a killer agent! In cases like that, look at more senior agents at their agency. Are they selling to good pubs? If so, the new agent likely has decent mentorship guiding them in the early years of their career, which is great! Newer agents can be hungry and tenacious because they’re working to carve out their place, so I definitely wouldn’t discredit them or rule them out. Likewise with newer editors!

Sales to Only Small/Digital Only Presses

Okay, I am beginning this with a big, huge THIS IS NOT A DIG AT SMALL PRESSES OR DIGITAL PRESSES. There are many authors who have wonderful experiences with them and great books on their rosters.

However, many of them do not require you to have an agent to submit to them. If agents are mostly selling to these imprints, I always wonder why. It again may hint at not having good connections at Big 5 publishers. Additionally, your agent gets 15% commission on any money you make on these deals, which may be smaller because of the size of the imprint, but you may not have even needed them to secure that deal in the first place. An agent can be very helpful in negotiating contracts and helping to sell subrights, but if they can only sell to a place where an agent isn’t needed… I tend to be a little wary of that.

Mass Client Exoduses

So… this is one that I missed and ignored for a while. If an agent has lost many clients in a short period of time or most do not stay long term, it’s worth investigating why that is.

This becomes easier to keep track of when you’re in more writer circles, but a good way to check something like this is look at who the agent’s clients are and check their deals. Did this client stay with their agent long term? Did they get a deal and then jump to another agent? Have there been multiple clients who are now with different people?

It’s a case of following a common thread, and a lot of these conversations happen through the grapevine, but it’s really important and can point to a widespread issue of displeasure with the agent’s work.

Asking for Payment Upfront

NO. Agents should never, ever charge you for representation or offer to rep you after you pay for a critique with them. Agents get paid when they SELL YOUR BOOK. This is Grade A schmagent behavior. This also goes for presses. If you are pursuing traditional publishing, you should never have to PAY someone to publish your book. That is what we call a vanity press and more often than not, they are really not reputable.

Manuscript Wishlist

Another step in getting ready to query is figuring out who is a great fit for you and your book!

Many agents list their Manuscript Wishlists (MSWLs) on this site, where they list what kinds of books and authors they are looking for. Not all agents are on here or up to date. Some will share their on social media pages or agency websites instead.

MSWLs are not the be all end all. Sometimes, agents don’t know they want your book until they see it. It’s more like a taste test. For example, as someone who writes paranormal, an agent seeking romance might list something like “I am not a good fit for anything spooky or paranormal”, so I’d reason they are not the best fit for me! However, another agent who is open to really any kind of romance, I might give a try, even if they specifically did not ask for “A Book About Web Series Costars who Fall In Love Looking for Cryptids”.

The Query Letter

So, after using the word “query” eight thousand times in this newsletter, let’s talk about what a query actually is. A query letter is a 1 page letter that gives an agent the important information about your book including:

• genre

• word count

• compelling story blurb

• comp titles

• bio

There are many helpful resources to guide you in writing yours. To be completely honest, writing a query is the hardest part for me. It’s a challenge to get things as snappy, direct, and clear as possible and I often go through several drafts of a query before it’s ready to go. Below are a couple of places that have great guides on query letters:

https://janefriedman.com/query-letters/

https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/how-to-write-a-query-letter/

The most helpful thing I found while I was in the process of writing my first queries was to just read other people’s. A lot of authors share their queries online and reading the ways they pitched their books helped me wrap my head around how to write mine. Here is a great compendium of author query letters.

For example, here is the query letter I used for LOVE AND OTHER CONSPIRACIES when I queried it in 2022.

Dear [AGENT],

When Hallie Barrett’s co-producer ex cuts her from their upcoming show, she believes in only one thing: beating him in their company’s web series competition with a hit show of her own. With only days to develop that winning show or risk losing her job, Hallie falls down a strange rabbit hole where she discovers Hayden Hargrove, host of a hit conspiracy theories podcast, theorizing that Bigfoot could be an alien on late-night TV. Hayden is a charismatic and talented storyteller, who makes even a skeptic like Hallie want to believe in aliens, Bigfoot, and something called… Mothman? However, once he’s in front of the camera, he’s wooden, nervous, and his charm vanishes into the Bermuda Triangle, along with Hallie’s chances of beating her ex. That is, until Hallie hits him with a healthy dose of skepticism and their chemistry turns him back into the charismatic host she found on TV.

Hallie steps into Hayden’s co-host seat, sending her hunting for monsters, aliens, and other paranormal entities. Although logical Hallie rejects all of Hayden’s ghost stories and conspiracy theories, she is starting to believe in their budding romance. While Hayden is a perfect partner on-screen and in love, Hallie learned the hard way what happens when she lets a man hold her career and heart in their hands. As their season wraps up, with their show neck and neck with her ex’s, Hallie must re-evaluate her own conspiracy theory that winning at all costs is the ultimate prize, or if love is the real find of a lifetime.

LOVE AND OTHER CONSPIRACIES is an 88,000 word adult romantic comedy perfect for fans of the monster-hunting hijinks of Buzzfeed Unsolved and quirky co-host romance of The Ex Talk.

I am a neurodivergent writer based in Los Angeles, with a degree in Writing for Film and Television from Emerson College. When I’m not writing, I can be found deep in a rabbit hole of alien conspiracy theories on the internet.

This query garnered the below stats.

Offers of Rep: 5

First Query Sent: 7/20/22

Signed with Agent: 8/25/22

Disclaimer: This is an extremely quick turnaround and is by no means the average timeline, request rate, or offer rate. Every single book will be different. I am sharing this for transparency’s sake. This only happened quickly because it coincided with a pitch event and a singular agent who read and offered quickly.

There are some other things you may need when you submit a query, and as always, check an agent’s querying guidelines and requirements!

• Synopsis: a 1-2 page summary of your book. Agents will have different page length/formatting requirements.

• 1 Sentence Pitch: This is a short logline that sells your book quick.

• Similar Titles: These are like comp titles, but you can be a bit broader here. I.e, you wrote a book about actors, list some Hollywood books here.

• Target audience: Who do you think will pick up your book?

That is all I have for this first installment, but I’d love to know what you guys would like to hear about next. Are there areas in this newsletter you want me to dive deeper into?

Let me know in the comments!