On Querying: Part 2 - Pitch and Professionalism

There are approximately fifty-billion resources online and off to learn about querying and writing a query letter, but in Part 2 of my series, I’m here to break it down a little differently.

If you read my previous post in this series, you’ll know that I’m a fan of the mantra made famous in The Godfather, and then doubled down on in You’ve Got Mail, it’s not personal, it’s business. IT’S NOT PERSONAL. IT’S BUSINESS. Your query letter is a piece of business correspondence. Not only does it pitch your book, but it is your first opportunity to prove to a potential agent that you are a writer who takes their career seriously. You want an agent to come away with two impressions from your query letter: excited about your pitch and confident in your professionalism.

During my time in the query trenches, I had about a 20% request rate for my queries: 18.9% with GAME. SET. MATCH. and 22% for #AngstyGymBook, my most recent manuscript. Averaging out to about 20%, that’s the generally accepted percentage for a successful pitch. We’ll talk about rejection in the next part of the series, but seriously, they call baseball a game of failure because Hall of Fame players generally hit about .300. That’s a 30% success rate for the best players in the history of the game. Publishing is one of the toughest industries in the world. Thicken your skin, put your head down, and keep going with that goal in mind: about a 20% success rate on your queries. Of course it only takes one agent to love your query and manuscript enough, but this kind of rate improves your odds of finding said agent in the first place.

Here’s how to get it:

First, the pitch. In short, it’s a quick summary, very similar to a cover copy, that gives the agent a taste of your manuscript. It’s generally accepted that the pitch should be told in same way a movie trailer is made - in the third person (regardless of your manuscript’s point of view), hitting on the major characters, conflict and stakes, without giving away the ending.

Here are the pitch portions of my query letters:

Eighteen-year-old Indiana Gaffney, the newest athlete at the Outer Banks Tennis Academy, has a killer serve that scares the crap out of her opponents and a pretty face that has the sponsors seeing dollar signs. There’s just one problem. She hasn’t actually won anything yet.

The OBX Classic – a prestigious, invite-only tournament – is her chance to prove herself to everyone, especially her dad, who isn’t really sold on the whole “tennis as a legit life-path” idea. Winning means wildcard entries to all the major tournaments next season, a huge jump-start for her young career. If she loses – well, she won’t lose, not even to Jasmine Randazzo, daughter of tennis royalty, current U.S. Open Junior Champion and world-class bitch.

Indy’s confident, but not delusional. To beat Jasmine, she’ll need more than just a big serve and a bright smile. To up her game, she starts training with Penny Harrison, one of the best players in the world. Working with Penny – a rare friendly face at the ultra competitive academy – is great for her tennis, but means being around the Harrison brothers, a double dose of good looks and charm. Love may mean nothing in tennis, but in life, it’s not that simple. Not when one boy makes her laugh, but the other makes her pulse pound.

With her heart and her future on the line, there’s only one thing left to do: win.

(Side note: if you’ve read GAME. SET. MATCH. you’ll know just how much changed, for the better, from the manuscript I queried to the final product!)

Here’s the pitch from my most recent manuscript, which you may know as #AngstyGymBook from Twitter:

The only thing seventeen-year-old Audrey Lee dreams about is swinging her way to Olympic glory on the uneven bars. Nothing is going to stop her, not even the agony in her back that forced her out of the gym for a year and will bring her career to an end after the Games. Every spasm and ache will be worth it once she has that gold medal around her neck.

But none of her training prepares her for her coach being led away in handcuffs, accused by a fellow gymnast of the unthinkable. No one knows what to believe and Audrey's teammates, including her best friend, are at each other’s throats. With a new coach, Olympic officials and the media circling like vultures, only one person seems to understand, her new coach’s son, Leo, with his sparkling green eyes, cocky smile and Olympic dreams of his own.

As the Olympic torch closes in on Tokyo - and the end of her career along with it - Audrey has no idea who to trust, let alone what life holds after her final dismount. The only thing she can do is hope that, in the end, belief in herself and what’s left of her team, will be enough for gold.

In both pitches I follow the same basic format:

• Paragraph 1: Main character: who is she and what does she want?

• Paragraph 2: Conflict: what is keeping her from getting what she wants?

• Paragraph 3: Stakes: What are the possible outcomes of the conflict?

If you cannot identify what your main character wants, what’s keeping them from getting it and what the stakes are if they do or don’t...then you need to revise your manuscript. Those are the basic tenets of storytelling and if they aren’t clear to you, it certainly will not be clear to a potential agent.

Obviously, the pitch should be told in your voice, so it doesn’t have to be an exact match of the above, but make sure: main character, conflict and stakes. (Writing tip: I’m a plotter, so before I even start writing a manuscript, I usually write a pitch to make sure I’ve got what I need for a story. And what do I need? A main character who wants something, a conflict and stakes!)

Okay, so you’ve got your pitch ready to go with your character that wants something, a conflict keeping them from it and the stakes, but that’s just one part of your query. The next part is almost as important because if you’ve hooked an agent with your pitch, you don’t want to lose them through a lack of professionalism.

Some people think the title, genre/category and word count are a part of their pitch, but I put it in the “professionalism” section of the query. Understanding your genre and category, falling within the range of appropriate word count and a mini-biography touting whatever credentials you have or even just a bit - a very little bit - of background on who you are and why you wrote the book, shows the agent that you’re a functional human being who understands how to communication in a professional manner with a potential business partner. The first time I queried I had very few credentials, but I did have a solid grasp on what was expected of a YA contemporary novel and noted that I’d actually looked at their agency’s submission guidelines and sent along the appropriate amount of materials.

Here’s the “professionalism” portion of my query for GAME. SET. MATCH.:

Told from three points of view, Indy, Jasmine and Penny, GAME. SET. MATCH. is a contemporary YA novel of 65,000 words. As per your submission guidelines, I have attached the [insert agency’s preferred amount of content/pages here].

As a high school librarian and coach, this project is the merger of my two great passions, young adult literature and sports. I am a proud member of YALitChat.org. I also host a blog and am active on Twitter and Facebook.

The second time I queried, I had a little bit of juice behind me - previously agented, previous sale and a few industry credentials that qualify me to write the story I wrote. I also explained, as quickly as possible, my publishing journey up to that point, but it follows the same basic format:

An 87,000 word YA novel, [Title redacted because it’s changing] is THE NOWHERE GIRLS meets MAKE IT OR BREAK IT.

I am in search of representation after amicably parting ways with [insert former agent and agency here]. I have two previously published novels, GAME. SET. MATCH. (2013) and LOSING AT LOVE. (2015). They were sold in 2012 to Coliloquy (which was then acquired by Vook and subsequently, Macmillan where it was renamed Pronoun, before closing entirely earlier this year. It was quite the journey). After that final closure, my rights were reverted and I self-published both titles.

After following gymnastics for years as a fan, I covered the Olympic Trials and the Rio Olympic Games in 2016 for Fangirlish.com and have made several appearances on the famous gymnastics podcast, Gymcastic.

My sample pages are below, as requested. Thank you for your consideration.

In the second example, I used comp titles. In the first I didn’t. I do recommend having comps simply because it reinforces to the agent that you’ve done your research and understand where your book may fit in the market, but if - for whatever reason - you can’t come up with any, it won’t be a deal breaker if the agent is intrigued by your pitch and reassured by your professionalism.

There’s one more part of a query letter and I saved it for last because it’s only important to include if you actually have something to say. Personalization. I didn’t personalize either of the queries I sent to the agents I eventually signed with and going back through my records, it didn’t seem to have much impact one way or another in whether an agent requested a partial or a full. However, I don’t think it hurts a pitch and I know there are others who disagree with me. Personalize your query to the agent you’re querying, however, I say this with a caveat: only do so if you actually have something to say. For example, you spoke to them at a conference, they’ve requested materials from you before and you have a new manuscript to show them, you’ve interacted on twitter for years, your manuscript seems to have been written specifically for something they have on their manuscript wish list. If you don’t have anything like that to add, just leave it out. If the agent is interested in the manuscript’s concept and the writing in your pitch and the sample pages holds up against that concept, that will be enough.

So now we’re through two of the three majors parts of querying: finding agents to query and crafting a query letter! One more piece to the puzzle: the querying process itself!

Go to Part 3 here.

On Querying: Part 3 - Sending your Queries or Doing The Thing

Here we are in the third and final part of my Querying series. In the first part, I talked about how to cultivate a list of agents to query and in the second, how to write a query letter focusing on your pitch and your professionalism. Now, finally, we get to the good stuff, actually querying.

Before we dive headfirst into the different schools of thought on querying strategies, I want to address something I’ve seen over and over again with friends in headed into the trenches: fear.

I understand fear of rejection. It’s the most normal thing in the world, but here’s the thing: being afraid of querying is sill because you’ve already done the hard part. The hard part of publishing is finishing the manuscript. Writing a book is by far one of the most difficult things in the world to do. It’s something most people will never accomplish, though many aspire to it. And you did it. You climbed Everest. Sending some emails to see if other people might like it? That’s NOTHING to what you’ve already been through. So, spit in the face of that fear. You’ve got this!

Now, how to query?

The traditional advice is to send out queries in small batches to test the waters. If this is your first time in the query trenches, sending out queries in batches of five or ten seems to be the method most recommend you employ.

Querying, at first, often feels like trial and error because you really can’t know for sure if you’re doing it correctly until you start to get some feedback. However, publishing - especially querying - is known for having the speed of a sloth on it’s day off. So, how can you know if you’re querying properly, in a timely fashion, if no one responds.

This is where Querytracker comes in. If you delve into the “Data Explorer” section of an agent’s profile, it can give you a general idea of where an agent is in responding to their slush pile. So, while the advice varies on which agents you should query first, my recommendation is two fold: the first agents you should query are the ones that seem like a good fit beyond simply representing your category/genre (perhaps they mention something like your manuscript on their MSWL) and respond quickly. Odds are if you combine that criteria and your query is solid, you’ll get at least one or two partial/full requests in your batch of five to ten queries.

Now, here is the big caveat: remember that a FANTASTIC request rate is about 20%. That’s one request per five queries, but there is very little way to know which agents on your list are in that, hopefully, 20%. It could be that you simply queried five or ten agents that fall into the percentage of agents of “were never going to request your particular manuscript for whatever reason and it has nothing to do with you or your query.” If you receive nothing but rejections on your first batch of queries, don’t completely rewrite it yet: reach out to fellow writers, give it to someone with fresh eyes who hasn’t read either your query or manuscript before, post your query on the forums at QueryTracker and AbsoluteWrite or if you don’t mind spending a bit of money, hire an experienced editor for a query critique/edit.

All that being said, querying, especially if you are new to publishing, is very much a numbers game. If you’ve done your due diligence and researched all the agents out there that represent your category and genre, odds are you have a list of 50-100 agents, at least, that you could potentially query. I’ll use myself as an example, when I queried GAME. SET. MATCH. In 2012, I sent out 90 queries over the span of about a month and a half. Of those 90 queries, I received a partial or full manuscript request from 17 agents. When I queried #AngstyGymBook this past July, I queried 109 agents in about three weeks.

Fast? Yes. I call it the Kool Aid Man Method because it felt like this…

A few of my friends have dubbed it the, “Rip The Bandaid Off” Method and that feels pretty accurate.

I know what traditional querying wisdom says about this, but I just...disagree. If you’ve done your due diligence - which you have, right? You’ve polished your manuscript to within an inch of its life, your first chapters sing out to be loved, your query letter has a fantastic pitch that holds up the major tenets of storytelling (main character, conflict, stakes!) and is set aglow by your professionalism, then there is no reason not to test the waters at first to make sure all of that is true and then query EVERY. SINGLE. AGENT. ON. YOUR. LIST. AS. QUICKLY. AS. YOU. ARE. COMFORTABLE. DOING. SO. You’ve already done your research, you have a list of agents and access to their submission guidelines, so putting together the query letters for each agent should be a relatively simple process.

I want to remind you of something I said way back in the first part of this series: there is no way to really know whether or not you want to work with a particular agent, until you speak to that agent about your book and your career. And the only way to do that is to get your manuscript requested and read by enough agents that you can begin to speak to them about representation. Thus, my philosophy is to query any and all agents who, through the superficial lens of the internet, seem like they might be a good fit and then get as many of them to read as possible, as quickly as possible.

Do the thing.

DO. THE. THING.

Send your queries out into the world because there is an agent out there who is going to adore your manuscript as much as you do, who wants to champion it to publishers and celebrate with you as you conquer the industry together. And the sooner your lovely polished query and fantastic manuscript are out in the query trenches, the sooner all of that can happen.

When I parted ways with my first agent early last summer - while I still count her as a friend, we just didn’t share a vision for #AngstyGymBook - I followed literally every step in this series, but here’s a quick timeline for how it all played out.

I parted ways with my previous agent on July 3rd.

I gave myself through July 4th to be sad about it.

When I got home from a Independence Day BBQ, on the evening of the 4th, I logged back on to Querytracker and started making a list.

That process was done pretty quickly. Remember, I’ve been in the industry for six years. There were scores of people I could keep or eliminate at a glance.

Because I always write a pitch before I write a manuscript, I already had the first part of what would eventually become my query letter, so I sat down to write out the reasons I was looking for new representation and a very brief bio to introduce myself and my qualifications.

I had a query letter ready to go by the morning of July 5th.

And then...I queried.

Here’s a video to show you how it went!

Some other little tidbits of advice before I sign off! Remember, keep all your interactions with agents courteous and professional and once you have an offer, don’t forget to update everyone (yes, even agents who only have your query) to let them know someone wants you and your manuscript. It’s amazing how quickly the requests roll in once you have an offer!

Also, one of the things I did, which flouts tradition just slightly, was I reached out to authors represented by every agent who requested my full manuscript. Usually, the common practice is to wait until you have an offer, but every author out there with an agent has been where you’ve been and will understand why you might want to do your research before an offer is made. Every single author I reached out to responded almost immediately and talked about the pros and even sometimes cons (usually issues of personal preference: editorial vs. not, smaller agency vs. larger, etc.) of working with their agent.

Thanks for reading and happy querying!

If you ever have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on my socials linked on this site! I'm always happy to answer questions.

On Querying: Part 1 - Choosing Agents

I want to begin with a fair warning. This isn't a step by step How to Query guide. There are dozens of places to find that information. This series will outline the process I used to query successfully out of the slush pile, twice. Nothing more, nothing less. I hope it's helpful and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out!

Before we really get started, a quick overview, for those of you who might be new to this process. If you want to be traditionally published with an imprint at Big Five Publisher (Hachette Book Group, Harper Collins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster) or even a smaller, independent press, you’ll need a literary agent as most of these publishing houses are closed to unsolicited submissions. An agent represents you and your manuscript as a sort of first line of defense for publishers that, even with that layer of protection in place, are constantly inundated with materials. If an agent sells your manuscript to a publisher, then and only then are they paid: usually a 15% commission, though this can vary very, very slightly. Never, EVER, pay an “agent” prior to a sale and a signed contract. EVER. From there, the publisher will take the reins and get your book out into the world.

Okay? Okay. All that out of the way, let’s dive in.

Over the years one of the consistent messages I’ve seen to writers in the query trenches is never query an agent that you wouldn’t want to work with. This is advice from well-meaning agents whose time is wasted over and over again by people who aren’t doing their due diligence and making the an agent’s query inbox quite frankly, something deserving of its moniker, slush pile.

I’m here to tell you something different. There is absolutely no way you can know if you want to work with an agent until you’ve spoken to that agent about your manuscript, your future projects and your plans for your career. It is impossible.

Throw that advice out the window and look at it this way instead: the entire point of the querying process is to narrow down the list of agents you’d potentially be interested in working with, if their vision for your manuscript and your career aligns with yours. That’s what you should be looking for, not some magical unicorn that will offer immediately upon reading your query letter because they just know they want to work with you. They can’t know that without reading your MS and speaking to you. It works both ways.

Writing is an art. It requires hard work and talent and a little sprinkling of that something extra that no one can seem to put a name to, but everyone knows it when they see it.

Querying, at least at first, is a science. Querying is spreadsheets and checklists and cold, calculating decisions based upon aggregated data.

To borrow from The Godfather and later from You’ve Got Mail, it’s not personal, it’s business. Repeat it to yourself. It’s not personal. It’s business.

I’ve queried twice. Once in 2012 and then again in 2018. The first time I signed with an agent in a little less than two months. The second time, I signed after three weeks. Miraculous? Maybe, but I credit that fast turnaround to the research I did prior to sending out my queries and understanding what I needed to do to maximize my own chances of securing, not just any representation, but the right agent for my career.

As we delve into this complicated topic, I’m going to assume something about you: that you’ve written a manuscript and that you’ve polished that manuscript to within an inch of its life. You’ve addressed narrative structure, character development, themes, pacing, sub-plots, sentence variety, word choice and anything else I’m leaving out. Your first five to ten pages practically sing from the amount of attention you’ve given them. You’ve done all of that because you’re a very serious writer with the very serious goal of having your manuscript traditionally published. Therefore, you need a literary agent to represent you and your career. (Side note: if you don’t want to work with an agent, that’s perfectly legitimate. Kudos to you for taking control of your own career and you have my respect and admiration for it. That being said, this series isn’t for you.)

So, if you’ve written a polished manuscript that’s at the point where it needs an agent and editor’s guidance to get it on the bookstore shelves, it’s time to query.

But, who do you query?

The answer is simple, though somehow, confusion still seems to reign supreme in the query trenches. You should query any and all agents who may be a good fit for you and your career.

And, how do you know that?

There are three questions to answer when deciding whether or not you should query a particular agent and I’ve asked them of myself each time I added an agent to my list - or not.

• Does this agent represent the category/genre of your current manuscript?

• Does this agent work for a reputable agency?

• Does this agent have a record of sales in the category/genre of your current manuscript?

Let’s address these one by one.

The first question is what I call, if you’ll forgive the mathematical term, The Given. There is some wiggle room with the second and third question, but not the first. The first is a must:

Does this agent represent the category/genre of your current manuscript?

An agent must represent the category and genre of the manuscript you are currently querying.

No, it doesn’t matter if everything else you’ve ever written is Adult Urban Fantasy. If this manuscript is YA Science Fiction, then you should only be targeting agents that represent YA Science Fiction.

Should you be narrowing your focus further if you’ve written this wonderful YA Sci-Fi, but know that in the future you want to sell your Adult Urban Fantasy? Maybe. That’s up to you, but again, you are querying this manuscript. Focus there.

Identify your manuscript’s category and genre first. (If you can’t do this, you need to take a trip to the bookstore and look around. Where would your book fit best? The question is that simple. Don’t concern yourself with subplots and, “but it has a touch of this and a bit of that.” No. Where would the nice workers at the bookstore put your MS if they had to make it fit somewhere? That’s your answer. If it truly doesn’t fit anywhere then you either need to go back and make some major changes or consider self-publishing. The bookstore model isn’t perfect and there are things that fall through the cracks. They’re rare, but they exist.

Okay, moving on, you’ve determined your genre and category. Great. Time to query, but which agents? You have your given question. Start there.

I used Querytracker.net to help narrow my search down. The website is free (the paid version gives you some fun data analysis, but is largely unnecessary unless data is your thing. *clears throat* Data is totally my thing, so I subscribed to the paid version and obsessed over the charts and graphs). Querytracker lets you search for an agent by the genre and category you’ve determined is the best fit for your manuscript.

You now have a preliminary list of agents, but this is not the list you are going to use to query. We have to drill down further.

Time for the second question:

Does this agent work for a reputable agency?

This question becomes easier to answer off the top of your head the longer you’re in and around publishing. When I queried the first time I had no idea which agencies were reputable at all. The second time around, there were agencies that were an immediate yes, some that were an immediate no and other that I had to to look into further.

Take a look at the agency’s website. They do have a website, right?

• Does it look high quality?

• Does it reference authors and books you recognize?

• Does the agent(s) you’re looking into have a page where they describe the kind of books they’re looking for?

• Does the agency have specific guidelines they want you to follow when submitting? (Spoiler alert: the answer to this question is yes, make a note of those directions in Querytracker or your spreadsheet or wherever you’re keeping information. We’ll talk about how to follow those guidelines in Part Two of this series).

• If it’s a relatively new agency, does the agent describe previous successful experience and sales at a larger, more reputable agency?

• Or, alternatively, did the agency seem to pop up out of nowhere, perhaps started by an intern, assistant or a junior agent with a very limited record of sales or experience?

So you’ve looked around the agency’s website and they seem like a legitimate agency that sells manuscripts to publishers in your category and genre. Great! You’re still not done. Time for questions number three:

Does this agent have a record of sales in the category/genre of your current manuscript?

Sales record. An agency’s website will only show you what they’ve done in the past. Digging deeper, as far as I’m concerned, is part of your due diligence. What is that agency, and the agent you’re researching, doing right now and in the future? Here’s where things get less free. I highly recommend a subscription to Publisher’s Marketplace. It’s $25 per month, but it is worth every penny while you’re researching. (It’s more than possible to do all of this research over the course of a month to avoid paying more than $25.) It’s an investment into yourself and your career. Of course, you can definitely research extensively without a Publisher’s Marketplace subscription, but you won’t find a place where all of this information is at your fingertips. If you do choose to subscribe, you’ll want to dig into an agency’s sales record. Check the agent on your list.

• Has the agent sold manuscripts in your genre/category before?

• If not, has the agency sold manuscripts in your genre/category before (and therefore has an industry wide reputation for placing said manuscripts)?

I cannot stress this enough: take notes as you do this research. Querytracker has a “letter” section where you can put your research on a particular agent. Make a note about their submission policies and what content you’ll need for your eventual query letter. Keep good notes now and you’ll make Future You very happy.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Do this for every agent on your potential list. Sometimes you’ll see something that throws up a red flag (zero sales in a category despite claiming to sell it, an agent with zero sales at all, etc. etc. etc.). By the time you’ve gone through all those websites, you’ll have decent idea of which agents should be on the receiving end of your query letters.

But, what if more than one agent from a reputable agency feels like a fit, but the agency says you can only query one or one at a time?

Dig deeper. Check the agents’ Twitter accounts. Check Manuscript Wishlist. Google them and see if you can track down an interview where they discussed their tastes. Try and figure out which one would be the better fit. All things being equal, check Querytracker and try to gauge which agent responds to queries faster based on the information there. I usually just queried the faster respondent, first. If that doesn’t help, go with your gut. Trust your instincts.

Quickly, I’ll take you through how I knew I wanted to query my agent, the phenomenal Alice Sutherland-Hawes of the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency.

Alice was on the list of agents that appeared on Querytracker when I limited my search by genre and category. Her page on Querytracker led me to her agency’s website and I was immediately impressed by the agency itself. Madeleine Milburn, the founder, won the 2018 British Book Awards Literary Agent of the Year. The agency represents some major authors and sells books in the US, UK and almost all other territories. Alice is the agency’s Rights Agent and is looking to expand the agency’s children’s list. A quick glance at her Publisher’s Marketplace page told me that she not only sold a ton of translation and foreign rights for her agency, but that she’s successfully sold Young Adult manuscripts to Big Five publishers. Her sales record, even though she’s just beginning to really build her own list, spoke to her work ethic and abilities and she works for an agency with a respected reputation within the industry - which helps to open doors. Thus, she went on my “to query list.”

That’s it for now. Next time I’ll talk about the query letter itself. What should go into it, what shouldn’t, the art of personalizing and the pitch itself!

Go to Part 2 here.