I Write Things: Oh, Query!

I promised you a post about querying and, whether you want it or not, you’re about to get it. If you want to follow along with my traditional publishing journey, you’ll want to read this; it will provide useful context for those of you who are not familiar with the process of trying to become a traditionally published author, as well as give you a glimpse into where I currently am in that process. Let’s dive in!

[Mandatory disclaimer: I am not a publishing industry expert, so what I share here is only what I’ve gleaned from the internet, as an outsider trying to navigate said industry. If you’re an aspiring writer yourself, don’t take anything I say as gospel, ok? There are lots of good resources out there to consult, but please be careful — there are also many terrible ones. Protect yourself and don’t get burned/taken for a ride by unscrupulous bad actors.]

OK, so you’ve written a book. Congrats! Now what?

This was me, back in April. I’d written the book, edited it, sought out and received beta reader feedback, edited some more, and felt ready to take the first step towards getting my book out into the world. Doing that via trad publishing (as opposed to self-publishing) has 3 main steps: 1) get a literary agent to represent your book, 2) sell your book to a publisher, and 3) have your book published.

There are five major publishing houses (conveniently called The Big 5), each with many imprints. Think of an imprint as a sub-brand. Imprints often specialize in specific genres, like fantasy, mystery, etc. Outside of the Big 5, there are a number of mid-size and indie publishers as well. They all publish “traditionally”, which is to say that they buy books from authors, polish them up, and sell them to the public. In this process, the publisher takes on all of the financial burden and risk; the author, once they get a contract, doesn’t have to pay for anything — not editing, not cover design, not marketing, nada. In exchange, they get (a) an advance, and (b) a (small) percentage of the sales proceeds from their books. That’s the main difference between trad publishing and self-publishing; in the latter case, the author pays for everything required to get the book ready for publication, but retains a greater portion of the sales proceeds. [Not all, because platforms that sell self-published books will always keep a percentage.]

The Big 5 publishers do not accept book submissions directly from authors. To have a chance of being published by a Big 5, you need a literary agent. The agent’s job is to sell your book to the publisher, and help you negotiate your contracts. Agents will also often help edit/polish up your book before it’s submitted to publishers. They take a cut of your earnings from the publisher, including any advance, but they only get paid if you end up selling your book. Getting agent representation does not automatically guarantee that you’ll sell your book; but you (generally) can’t sell your book without representation. Makes sense? Now, some smaller publishing companies do accept direct author submissions. Submitting to a publisher is not entirely dissimilar to submitting to an agent. Both require a query.

A query is basically a resume and cover letter for your book. Not for you as an author — that was a distinction I was fascinated to learn about. An agent is looking for a product to sell to publishers, not for a client (author). Over time, a relationship may develop where the agent will represent an author across many books, perhaps for their entire career, but this isn’t a given. [Authors can have several agents, even at the same time, for different books.] But, in the first instance, the agent is not “signing up an author” per se; they are signing up a product. This is important to understand. Agents offer to represent books they think they can sell, not authors whose talent they appreciate. As a writer, this is both discouraging (quality and marketability are two different things, and the publishing industry cares more about the latter, because it’s a business and capitalism sucks) and liberating (an agent rejecting your book isn’t rejecting you as an author).

Ok, back to the query. It’s a one-page letter whose purpose is to pitch your book to the agent and to convince them to agree to take it on. There’s a WHOLE science/art to query letters, which I won’t bore you with here. They’re surprisingly difficult to write (effective ones, anyway) and have to do a LOT of heavy lifting — basically, convincing an agent that your book is worth even looking at. In some cases, agents will only accept the query letter, and nothing else. Some agents will also ask for a short writing sample — anywhere from the first 10 pages to the first 2-3 chapters of your book. If the agent is hooked/intrigued by your query letter and/or the writing sample, they will ask for either a partial or full manuscript for review. If they like the manuscript, you’ll get an offer of agent representation.

And that’s step #1 in the trad publishing process.

This step can take months and sometimes years. Some authors are never able to get agent representation; some only get it on the 2nd or 3rd book they query — or the 5th or the 10th. Yes, some authors write half a dozen or more books before they write the one that ends up getting picked up by an agent. (And, remember, that’s only step 1.) It’s a hard slog and it can be intensely demoralizing. I’ve only been querying for about 7 weeks, and I can tell you: it’s not fun, not even a little bit. And it’s a TON of work. Thanks to platforms like QueryTracker, it’s relatively easy these days to find lists of agents who accept unsolicited queries, and to send them yours. But to have a decent shot at finding representation, you have to research agents and find the ones who specialize in your type of book. Remember, their job is to sell your book, which means being knowledgeable and enthusiastic about that genre/type of book; every agent will have his or her own niche, based on their personal interests as well as their connections within the publishing industry. Agents publish their manuscript “wishlists” (aka the types of books they’re looking to represent), and it takes time to trawl through those. Then you also have to tailor your query to each agent’s interests. Well, you get the idea … it takes time and effort.

Seven weeks in, I’ve sent 50 queries. It might sound like a lot, but it’s not. Querying is a numbers game as much as anything. You only need one person to say “yes” but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack; to increase your chances, you have to ask a lot of people. I’ve heard of people sending hundreds of queries. I don’t think I’ll be able to do that. Based on my specific genre, there just aren’t that many agents who would be a good fit. My goal is to try to get as close to 100 as I can before the end of the year. If nothing comes out of that, I’ll start considering other options. Out of those 50 queries, I’ve received 8 rejections — all of them form rejections. I also received two full submission requests and one partial submission request.

A submission request is a major win at this stage of the game. It means the agent is intrigued enough to want to devote time to reading your entire manuscript (or a portion of it). It’s not a guarantee that they will love it, of course. But it’s a necessary preliminary step. From the stats I’ve seen, most agents have a submission request rate of less than 10%. That is to say, for every 10 queries they receive, they will ask to see 1 manuscript — at most. I think that gives you a good sense of how difficult it is to “break into” trad publishing.

As I mentioned last week, my first full submission request eventually resulted in a rejection, as did the partial. I’m now waiting to hear back on the second full submission request, along with the rest of my queries. Many agents never send a written rejection for queries, so sometimes you’re waiting for … nothing. Like I said, it gets pretty demoralizing. Rejection isn’t fun for most people, but it’s especially not fun for people with ADHD, who experience something called rejection sensitive dysphoria.

[What ADHD giveth to a writer — aka, the hyperfixation that makes it possible to write 80,000 in a month — ADHD taketh away — aka, the complete emotional meltdown triggered by RSD that makes it feel impossible to follow through getting a book into the world.]

To keep myself occupied, I’ve been writing. In fact, I finished the first drafts of my next 2 books. Before you think “wow, that’s impressive”, please note that both of these are very much WIPs and still require months of work. They also represent a gamble on my part; while each book is a standalone, all 3 are part of the same “universe” and are interconnected via several (secondary) characters. The gamble is the fact that, if I can’t get my first book picked up, it will be bad news for the other two. One, because they’re in the same genre, style, and vibe; if the first book isn’t deemed marketable enough, my chances of successfully pitching the others will be slim. Two, because I will have to rewrite chunks of the subsequent books to eliminate certain references to the first book and add bits of extra backstory for a couple of recurring characters. Time will tell. Now, I could be spending my time writing different books to increase my chances of selling those down the line, but I don’t want to do that. Yet. At the end of the day, I started writing because I wanted to amuse and entertain myself, and that means writing Golden Era-style romance mystery books … for now, anyway. One or two other ideas may or may not be percolating, but I’m deliberately keeping them on the backburner for now.

Well, that’s the query process in a nutshell.

Next week’s post is going to be a little surprise, but in my next writing update, I’ll talk a little bit more about my actual book — and, of course, bring you up to speed on my publishing journey 🙂