How to Query Literary Agents for Beginners
Aspiring authors everywhere look high and low for a way to get their books out into the world and into the hands of readers. One of the many ways to do that is the old classic route: traditional publishing.
Unfortunately, we can’t just walk up to a publisher on the street, hand them are manuscript, and receive a wad of cash in return—although that would be pretty cool.
In fact, we can’t go to publishers themselves at all. If you’re looking to traditionally publish your book, you first need to catch the eye of a literary agent by querying.
What is Querying?
Querying is a fancy word for saying, “sending your book out to a ton of professionals and bite your nails until you find out whether or not they liked it.” Sound scary? Well, it can be.
Querying is the act of sending a pitch for your book out to literary agents. Literary agents are publishing professionals who act as liaisons between writers and big publishing houses. Most publishing houses don’t accept submissions from writers that aren’t represented by literary agents. Can you imagine the millions of manuscripts they’d get a day?
So instead, literary agents act as the go-between. They choose projects they want to take under their wing and proceed to (attempt to) sell them to publishing houses.
Basics of Querying
Finding Literary Agents
There are a few places you can find literary agents, from social media to places like Manuscript Wish List.
One of the best places to find them is Query Tracker. Query Tracker has an entire list of literary agents, agencies, and links to each of their websites. You can track your querying progress, as well, including who you’ve queried, who you want to query, and who you don’t want to query.
It’s a great resource, so head over and poke around.
Manuscript Wish Lists
Manuscript wish lists, or MSWLs as you’ll see on social media, are lists of items an agent wants to see. At their core, literary agents are readers. Which means they have their own tastes, likes, and dislikes. They post these lists so that they can find not only books that they connect with, but books they think they can sell.
I can’t overstate how important it is to read an agent’s wish list. If an agent explicitly says that they don’t represent science fiction and you send them a science fiction novel, it’s a waste of time for both of you. And it shows them that you didn’t even glance at their wish list.
Formatting
I’ve received some questions about formatting when it comes to querying, especially when it comes to the first pages. There are different rules that each agency will have (discussed in the next point), but in general, there are a few basic “known” rules:
Don’t use difficult font
Double space your pages, single space everything else
Use standard format for headings
It is important to use standard book format when submitting additional materials, as well.
Following Agency Guidelines
You wouldn’t think that “follow the rules” needed to be pointed out, but you’d be surprised by how many writers blow by agency guidelines and query with reckless abandon. Whether it’s because of nerves, forgetfulness, or something else, it’s a tragic disservice to both the writer and the queried agent.
Different agencies have different guidelines for querying. Some accept only email queries while some only have forms available. Some allow you to query another agent once another passes, while others have an “a no from one is a no from all” policy, meaning that you can’t query the same agency twice if you’re rejected.
Guidelines will be posted clearly on an agency website. If you can’t find them, you can ask on forums such as Query Tracker for clarification. Be sure to read any posted guidelines and—most importantly—follow them.
You don’t want your query to be automatically thrown out because you missed a line that said “no email queries please.”
Query Letter
Now, you’ve followed the guidelines, you’ve chosen an agent to query, and you’re ready… now what?
Now, you just have to write you’re query letter. It’s that hard and that difficult.
A query letter is essentially a pitch for your book. If you open the front cover or flip to the back of a published book, you’ll see a summary of what the book is about. It’s enticing, snappy, and full of stakes that make you want to read on.
This is what your query letter should be.
Query letters should typically be somewhere between 200 and 300 words long, give or take a couple stragglers. I have a free query letter resource that you can download and fill out to craft a query letter for your book. It may take several revisions, so don’t be discouraged. Of course, if you need any extra help, you can reach out to me here.
Writer’s Bio
The following few tips mostly apply to agents who request form queries, which are becoming increasingly more frequent. When you click “query” for an agent, you will be led to a new page with a form you can fill out with your information through Query Manager.
In emails, your bio will typically go at the end of the body of your query letter. On forms, however, it’s often in a separate box.
Your bio should be short, simple, and to the point. It should not be longer than the query itself. The only possible exception would be non-fiction if you have a lot of credentials, but even than, it’s iffy.
Be sure to include anything relevant to your book or possible publishing chops. If you don’t have anything like that, just say something personable. Let your personality shine. Agents want to know who they’re possibly going to be working with.
One Line Pitch
A one-line pitch is the bane of existence for a lot of writers. Just as the name suggests, this is a single sentence that explains what your book is about. I know what you’re thinking.
“How do I boil down my 100,000-word epic fantasy into one sentence?!”
I feel you. But it is possible. A great place to look for examples of this is Publisher’s Marketplace. Honestly, you don’t even have to have a subscription to the website. Look on x (formerly Twitter) for book announcements and you’ll see screenshots of book deal announcements. In them, you’ll often find a single sentence that explains the premise of the book.
This shows the agent that you 1) know your book well, 2) know how to market it, and 3) have something worth pitching.
If you can’t boil your book down into a single punchy sentence, your concept may not be refined enough.
Similar Books
This is another section that is often in the metadata section of the query, but agents with forms will often have it as a separate box.
This is where you show where your book stands in the market. These are also known as comp titles. What books compare to yours? Who would other people say your book is like? You may also get a prompt for similar authors, in which you can do the same. List the authors that write similar stories or have a similar style to yours. If you’re struggling to find comparisons, keep looking. They’re out there, I promise.
Target Audience
Ah, the target audience. Who did you write this book for?
You might be thinking, “Well, I wrote it for me,” or “I wrote it so spite that one person who said I couldn’t.”
That may be so, but you still have a target audience. There is a specific group of people who would like to read your book. Go deeper than your age category. If you wrote a Young Adult book and say, “it’s for teens 14-17 years old!” that’s a broad range and isn’t much to go off for the agent.
But if you say, “this is for girls 14-17 years old who love X-Files and relearning how to love pink after the patriarchy made them hate it,” that’s a little more specific.
Synopsis
The dreaded synopsis. Some writers hate this more than they hate the one-sentence pitch, or just as much.
Most forms will require you to include a synopsis that shows a play-by-play of the plot of your book. Yes, even before they read the whole thing. Why?
Because they want to see if it makes sense. They want to know if it’s worth reading, or if the plot goes off the rails in a way they don’t have time to fix. Some agents are editorial agents, which means they’ll help edit the book—if they love it enough. But agents have limited time as it is, so they have to be really head over heels for a manuscript in order to take the time to roll up their sleeves and dig into big revisions.
Types of Rejections
Now comes the sad, inevitable part. Rejections.
No matter how incredible or groundbreaking your book is, you will receive rejections. It’s inevitable. Whether it’s because your book isn’t to the agent’s taste, the agent doesn’t think they can sell it, or aliens evaporated your query, rejections are inevitable. So let’s break down the different types of rejections you may receive.
Form Rejections
The form rejection is the most common and most hurtful of the rejections. This is a paragraph or two (or even sometimes a single sentence) that the agent copies and pastes into the response to tell you that they’re not interested.
Like I said, agents are busy. They don’t have enough time in the day to personally respond to every single query, especially the ones who get hundreds per day. If you’re unsure whether or not the email you receive is a form, check the comments in Query Tracker. Chances are you’ll see other responses shared from other writers.
There are a lot of think pieces and speculative posts about what different form rejections mean, but personally, I recommend just tucking it away and moving on. If it’s not personalized, there’s no use in laboring over it, trying to discern meaning.
Personalized Rejection
Let’s say you get a rejection that uses your name, the name of your book, and has some pointed feedback about your plot or characters. Congratulations! You received a personalized rejection. Or, at the very least, a form rejection with slight personalization.
Even though it still stings, this is a good sign. This means there was something about your book that made the agent take time out of their day to give you personalized feedback. So make sure to consider it honestly.
Revise and Resubmit
A revise and resubmit invitation, or an R&R, is a fantastic sign. This is when an agent sends you back a list of changes they’d like to see and invites you to query them again when you’ve made the changes.
This means that they have enough interest in your book to want to see it again, but they want to see you make adjustments to convince them that it’s worth putting stake into.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that you’re guaranteed to get signed. You could complete an R&R, submit it again, and still be rejected, even if you took every single one of their suggestions. That’s just how the cookie crumbles.
So if you get an R&R, make sure to consider it carefully. Don’t just jump into edits right away. This is a good chance to figure out whether you would vibe well with the agent, as well. Do you agree with their suggestions? Do you like their editorial style? This is a great test for both of you to see if you’d work well together.
Types of Requests
Now that we’ve gone over all of the possible rejections, let’s get to the exciting stuff: acceptance.
You’ve sent of your queries. You’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting. Then, you receive an email. An agent loves your premise and wants to read more. Yay!
This is great. But they’re requesting the first three chapters, not the whole book.
While this may seem strange, it’s relatively common. Agents will often request the first three chapters or the first fifty pages of a manuscript before either passing or requesting the entire manuscript. This is because most agents will know within the first fifty pages whether or not they want to read the rest.
This is also why I include the first fifty pages in my submission package edits.
I recommend having both the first three chapters and the first fifty pages (if they’re not the same) saved as separate files on your computer in case a request like this comes in.
Of course, sometimes you’ll get a full request, which means you get to send the entire book. Yay!
The Call
You’ve received a full request. An agent has read your full book. And now, they want to set up a call with you. Eek!
This is fantastic news.
Usually, based on the email, you can tell whether they want to discuss R&R notes or if they want to offer to represent you. An offer of representation is, of course, what all writers want to hear.
An agent will set up a call with you and ask you questions about you, the book, your goals, and other projects you’re working on. Make sure that you’re working on other projects while querying! Many agents want to know that they can work with you in the long run on multiple books. Caitlin Lambert has a great blog on what to expect from and how to handle an agent call.
After this, if everything goes smoothly, the agent will offer representation. Here’s the important part.
Take two weeks to decide.
A reputable agent will always give you time (typically 14 days) to respond to their offer of representation. This gives you enough time to notify other agents who have your materials that someone has made an offer. If you’re lucky, other agents might set up a call to counteroffer. Then, you can choose which agent you want to work with. Worst case scenario, no one else offers, and you take the first offer you receive. Still a great result!
But it’s important to give yourself all the opportunities possible. Don’t just jump on an offer because of your excitement.