Queries… The Truth in Numbers

There comes a time in a writer’s life when they need to send a query to a publisher or agent to help move their published book dreams to reality. This can be an interesting and frightening time, full of angst. How do you write a one sentence hook that accurately summarizes your book and intrigues an editor/agent? How do you make your letter stand out? How do you know which no-nos to avoid? How do you allow your writer’s voice to come out in a business letter? How do you subtly add in the facts that you have garnered in your research of said agent or publisher? How, how, how?

(Four words for you on this one: research, AgentQuery Connect, and critiques.)

Once you figure you have that down in spades, you start sending the letters off. Then you wait. And wait. Your heart skips a beat whenever you open your email or see an envelope in your mailbox from an unfamiliar address. Eeek! Is it rejection or a request for more?

More often than not, it is likely a polite form letter saying ‘no.’ But then sometimes it is a ‘please send more, you’ve got my interest.’ And then you heart does a huge pitty-pitty-boom-boom that makes your heart do all sorts of funky beats and your head spin. Could this be it? Could this be the moment?

Good question. What are your odds? Folks in the industry have said that about 1 in 100 writers land an agent. Of those with an agent, about half of them manage to get their first book published. Gack! You mean it isn’t a sure thing once you’ve landed an agent. Sadly, no.

Back to queries. What is a good request rate on a good query letter? The numbers range from 10-30%. Seems like a lot doesn’t it? It is! (This number *does* vary a bit by genre.) Your query needs to be FABulous.

A little food for thought: The average agent can receive up to 100 queries a day. Every day. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. Of that 100, maybe one or two of those moves them enough to ask for a partial. If that is you, you are in the top percentile, aren’t you? And that feels pretty good.

A little more food for thought: About 70-80% of those queries you’re competing against, aren’t  that good. They aren’t serious, the queries don’t make sense, don’t talk about the book, are full of errors, or commit majorly heinous query faux pas (like bulk sends) and often are quickly and easily discarded.

So… If you aren’t snagging a request it means your query isn’t doing its job, OR your story is lacking something which shows in the query. For example, even if you have a stellar query, if you are late to a trend that is in its death throes… well, good luck and don’t expect a lot of requests.

A tip: Cold queries aren’t the only way to get an agent. Think blog contests where agents are involved, think conferences, think agent chats, think making yourself an online writerly commodity (what does that mean? Think moderator on writing sites, that sort of thing!). Find a way to make a connection with an agent. Think of a way to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Think of a way to show you are a professional. Think, think, think….

When you feel ready to query, there are lots of helpful sites (forums, agent blogs, agency websites, and a whole lot more!) out there to help you figure out how to put your best foot forward–and I urge you to make use of them. Make sure your writing is the absolute best it can be–there is no point using up your queries on the ‘best’ agents if you aren’t ready. Test that query. Do runs of 10 or so at a time. All rejections? Take a second look. Have someone else take another look. (Don’t forget to look at the first chapter you are sending along with it.) Make use of your resources and best of luck!

The Business of Prologues

I was just talking about this over on AgentQuery Connect and thought, “Hey, you know, this is worth repeating on my blog.” And so, here it is. The cold, dirty, hard truth about prologues and querying literary agents.

Click on image to see another viewpoint on prologues

Agents generally “don’t like” prologues because many aspiring writers have given them a bad name. Why? They use them as a crutch (not to say everyone does–sometimes they are a fabulously executed device that is intrinsic to the story) to make up for their failings in areas such as building suspense, creating a good story question, setting up the story, setting, characters, etc. Instead of cutting the first 40 pages of ‘warm-up,’ writers create a prologue that sneaks the reader ahead in the story in hopes that it’ll keep them hooked and maintain them through the ‘getting there’ early stages of the story. Agents also find that, in many cases, prologues can be cut and avoided altogether. <Gasp!>

So, say you are going to query a literary agent and are wondering about your prologue. The submission guidelines say “the first chapter.” Is your prologue truly a chapter? Yes and no. If it is short (I’d say three pages or less) it really doesn’t count as a chapter and should be sent along with “chapter one.” However, if your prologue is regular chapter length (that being around the ten double-spaced pages mark or more) it very much is its own chapter and should be treated accordingly when submitting to agents. Tricky, isn’t it? (And those of you with prologues around 5 pages long are cursing me right now.)

But can you get away with sending off your first chapter without your prologue?

NO! Absolutely not. (And if you are sniffling about how it isn’t your best work, it doesn’t make sense, etc., etc., and you don’t want to send it as you don’t want it to represent your book, then CUT IT.)

You MUST submit your prologue when querying agents. Why? Because it is the beginning of your novel. It is the first thing your reader is going to read and it is going to make the first impression. Say you send in the first three chapters and not the prologue. The agent reads them and asks for more. You send more, plus the prologue. Now they have extra work. They can’t just keep reading from page 49 or 51, or wherever your first submission left off. They have to figure out where this prologue fits in–which involves going back to the beginning of the story and possibly even rereading the first bit in light of this new information.

The cold hard truth: You’ve just wasted their time.

Ask yourself: What sort of impression have I just made?

This is my take on the whole prologue business. Naturally, there are folks who may disagree with this, and that’s fine. There also may be agents who feel differently about this as well. However, I think you can use this advice as a general rule of thumb to keep you ‘out of trouble.’ And if in doubt, check out the agent’s/agency’s blog and submission guidelines–occasionally they will mention what to do about the prologue.

When Not to Query or Pitch

If you have a query letter all ready to go and you are itching to send it off to an agent or have a pitch all sparkly and new for an editor… hold off. According to MediaBistro (this article includes most popular vacation dates) you should wait about another two weeks for the optimal receipt. Why? Folks are still on vacation. And then when they get back… well, they have some catching up to do. So, take a deep breath, move your finger off the send button and spend the next two weeks working on something new.

Enjoy!

Query a Literary Agent Anywhere, Anytime?

Maybe you’ve friended an agent on Facebook. Maybe you have a few agent ‘friends’ over at LinkedIn. Maybe you follow and chat up agents on Twitter. Maybe you’ve followed an agent around at a conference, waiting for them to pause long enough that you can pounce–and present your query or pitch with trembling voice and sweaty hands.

Is this a fine way to go, or should you stick to sending your query via email or mail as per their agency website guidelines?

Personally, I’ve always gone with emailing/mailing as per their agency guidelines, unless, of course, the agent in question has made it crystal clear that it is okay to query via other methods.

To reinforce the idea that maybe it isn’t okay to query anywhere and anytime is a tidbit or two I found on Twitter today as per Jean Martha (AKA @TheJeanMartha–a literary agent):

“Woke up to find 8 queries in my personal email inbox via Linked In. Deleted them all.”

And just in case you thought nobody would notice:

“When someone chats me up on Twitter, I look at their stream. Full of Agent ass kissing? I discredit them in the future. Season’s Greetings!”

There you have it, clams in a bucket. Do what you will… but you can’t say you haven’t been warned.

Desperation, Finding a Literary Agent and Perfect Matches

The other day a bunch of us aspiring authors were yaking it up in an AgentQuery.com chat room. Litgal, the studious, brilliant type had us read a blog post about writer firsts (first time getting an agent, first time getting a publisher, etc). It wasn’t the ‘first’ aspect of the article that got us talking, but the aspiring author desperation that can make us act in  ways that may not lead us to attain our career goals. (Yes, we aspiring authors can truly be a desperate lot. Note: not an attractive quality in dating, and also not an attractive quality in aspiring writers.)

While we aspiring authors are not desperate all the time, we do have those panic attack moments. That alone, isn’t the reason for concern. (Like dating, it’s when we act on our desperation that things go down a path that leads to nobody’s best interests.) For writers, desperation can lead us to sign with an agent who might not be The One.

To be honest, the idea of The One or a ‘perfect’ agent stresses me out. Why? Well, first of all, how do you know who that agent truly is when you send them a query letter? Yes, I research agents before querying and target ones that seems as though they might have The One potential. Yes, your research may gather a general sense of who the agent is as a professional, but the reality is, you won’t know who they truly are until you have talked to them and possibly even worked with them. So, who do you query? How do you know? What if there isn’t a The One out there for you?

Freaking out yet? Don’t worry, I have a theory. (Purely untested, of course, but I’m working on that.)

The questions is: Are there several The Ones when it comes to matching up with a literary agent?

My hypothesis: Yes. I believe so. This is a numbers game. A business deal. There are a certain number of agents out there that can help you make the most of your business (writing). The more queries you put out there, the more likely you are to reach the right agent. Some folks hit the right partner within 20 queries. Some need to send 200. (And yes, some never do.)

Because this is business and not some life-partner quest, I don’t think it’s fair to aspiring authors to think of finding a literary agent to represent them as The One. When finding the perfect mate, I was willing to wait as long as I needed. Decades, even. With finding a business partner, I am not willing to waiting that long. I am certain that there are at least a handful of agents out there that could connect with me and my work and vice versa (no desperation required to fog my vision). There could be a handful of The One agents that could help me bring my work to the world and help me reach my career goals.

I also think that the odds are in my favour–more than they would be if I were to go about finding a new, perfect mate. With dating, approximately 50% of the population is eligible for match ups. (I know, I know, there are men in that population who aren’t interested in women, who have already attached themselves to someone else, and men who aren’t going to be ‘t suitable. But you what I’m saying.) Of that 50% there is, say, one man in two thousand that you could see yourself marrying–happily–and being partners forever more. Not exactly the greatest odds. (Sorry to any singletons out there who now feel depressed.) With literary agents (around a 1000 in the U.S.A.), approximately 50% of the agents rep women’s fiction or romance (approximate guess, my favourite searchable agent database is down at the moment). Of that 50% (500), there are maybe five agents who would make a very good fit as a business partner and you could see yourself working happily ever after. Look at my odds: 1 in 100. That’s downright inspiring.

Next time you hear someone making an aspiring author hyperventilate by tossing around words like The One in the same sentence as literary agents, do me a favour, smack that person upside the head for me. Thanks.

When Break Ups Are Like Literary Agent Rejections

If you are a querying aspiring writer you may have noticed that at times, a rejection from an agent can sound almost like a break up line. To keep myself amused, I’ve made a little list of break up lines and their agent rejection equivalent.

(Please note: A querying aspiring writer is an unpublished writer who is emailing literary agents, asking to be theirs. In turn, they more often than not, turn around and send you back a cyber rejection. Either that, or you get the cold shoulder–no reply, because agents are like the hot chick in the bar on men’s night and are literally bombarded with more requests than they can deal with.)

Here goes (Break up lines / agent equivalent):

It’s not you, it’s me. / It’s not you, it’s the market.

I need some time to discover myself. / Your project doesn’t fit my current list needs.

I don’t deserve someone like you. / I am not the best fit/match for your project.

You are too good for me. / You have great potential, but I don’t feel passionate about your project.

I just don’t see this relationship going anywhere. / Your pages/character/story didn’t draw me in as much as I had hoped.

I don’t know what I want right now. / While I enjoyed your work, I don’t feel passionate enough to offer representation.

I found someone else. / I am not currently seeking new clients.

We need a break. / You are welcome to query me with a new project, but please stop querying me with this same story.

I think you are a great person, but…. / You show great potential as a writer, but….

I don’t think we are the best match, but you’re great and will get snapped up right away. / I didn’t make the connection with your material, but another agent may feel differently.

And two more (one of which came up in the comments section):

We’re don’t have enough in common / I don’t represent this genre.

A break up followed by a restraining order / Do not pitch to me in the washroom during conferences. / Do not jump out from behind the bushes in front of my office to pitch to me. / Do not phone me every day and convince my secretary you are a sick relative so you can pitch to me. / I am putting your email and story title in my spam filter.

If I still don’t have you convinced that romantic relationships can be like writer-agent relationships, check out the literary agency Baker’s Mark and their ‘Get to Know Us‘ page.

Submission Tip: Word 2007

If you are so lucky as to be asked to submit a partial to a literary agent and you use Word 2007, I’ve got a tip for you.

Awhile back, after receiving a request from a literary agent, I whipped up my partial in Word. I added a nice little title page/cover page using Word’s templates and saved it as a .doc (not .docx which is the 2007 default file format–unreadable in older versions of Word). I emailed it to the agent who wanted to read it that weekend. I was happy and optimistic as I didn’t hit ‘send’ and then realize I had forgotten to do something stupid like write ‘requested materials’ or include my contact information. I didn’t even cruise through my manuscript and see that I had used the wrong word somewhere.

The following Monday I got an email informing me there was some type of image in my document that made it impossible for her to upload the partial into her Kindle. Therefore, she was unable to read the sample. Please fix and resend. The best I could figure was that the Word title page template has some sort of embedded image (probably one of the nice text boxes or the vertical line that goes to the left of the title) that was messing things up. So, I whipped off the old title page, made a slap-dash, plain as punch title page (remembering to add in the word count) and resent the partial. Then I sat on my hands for about 3 weeks until she had time to read it. While I don’t think I would have been accepted as a client if I had managed to get her to read it right off the bat, I missed the benefit of ‘read it right now’ as well as riding that small wave of agent enthusiasm. I also made a busy agent’s life more difficult and caused her some frustration. You don’t want to do that.

Therefore, boys and girls of the aspiring writer world (or anyone within range of a Kindle), don’t use the Word 2007 title page templates if you think the document might come in contact with a Kindle (or possibly another electronic reader device such as the Sony Reader–it might have the same problems).

Lesson learned? Lesson learned.

Querying and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem

First of all, self-esteem in a writer is highly over-rated. Really, what are you planning to do with self-esteem anyway? Turn into some snotty, old curmudgeon? That’s what I figured. A little bit of healthy self-doubt is good for writers. It pushes us to struggle to the next level. It makes us humble.

If you aren’t feeling humble enough these days, try querying. Yowzers. (For those blissfully out of the loop, querying is when writers send query letters to literary agents, requesting representation. (A query letter is a business letter describing one’s work in hopes that it will interest the agent, who reads approximately 20-120 of these letters a day, prompting them to say, “Yes, send me the first 50 pages of your project so I can look them over.”). If you are lucky (and approximately in the top 1-5% of those querying), the agent will reply asking for a ‘partial.’ And no, they aren’t asking you to get them revved up. A partial is a small sample of your manuscript. Usually, this covers about the first 50 pages (although that can vary). With the convenience of email, there are some agents who ask for the first 50 pages right off the bat, along with the query. If the agent likes what they see, they will ask for a ‘full.’ A full is the whole manuscript. If they like that and feel passionate about it, they will offer representation. Occasionally, they will ask to see changes first. If you think you can work together, you sign a contract, the agent helps you put some more polish on your work, and then they approach publishing house editors on your behalf in hopes of landing a book deal.

The first part of querying (after you have removed all the hair from your head through the masochistic method of yanking it out, one small tuft at a time, aka, writing and editing the query letter approximately 80,000 times) is doing your research. This means cruising agency websites trying to find a match. (You can also use handy services like agentquery.com which gives you a list of agents who represent what you’re peddling and provide info on them. Still, you should do a cruise by the agency website to double check, etc.) This is where my knees get a little wobbly from time to time. Why? Some of these agency websites are mighty intimidating for a first-time novelist.

For example, a long list of big name authors who make a decent living curling up with their computer and pumping out stories–just a little bit intimidating when you think of the agent helping them one minute, then turning around to help you and your incorrect comma usage the next. Or how about sites that say things like, “We welcome talented writers….” How do I know if I’m a talented writer? Writing is so subjective. To say you have talent is like saying, “Look at me and my ginormous ego! Woo, get a load of me. I’m the next Faulker, Shakespeare and Dickens, all rolled into this fantastic package. Yeah, baby!” The subjectivity of determining talent makes me think of ‘So You Think You Can Dance, Canada?’ When I watch the auditioning dancers, it goes something like this:

Me: “Yeah, this guy rocks. He’s got moves. He’s so in. Look at that energy.”

Then it snaps to the judges and they are pulling at their very expensive hair, and practically yelling, “No! No, no, no. No.”

What is talent and what is sheer hard work? And can you tell when you look at a page?

Of course, if the research doesn’t get you, there are the rejections flying at you. Those can make some dings in your armour. Although, I am pleased to say that I have personally reached a stage where I send a batch, forget about them and assume anything coming in is a rejection. Then I am pleasantly surprised if they request a partial. It’s good for my self-esteem.