When it comes to trying to get an agent—and by extension, a traditional publishing deal—there’s a lot of information on the internet about some of the specifics. Top tips for your query letter or synopsis, how to research agents, that sort of thing. However, if you’ve just completed your first novel and are trying to work out from scratch what to do next, it’s surprisingly difficult to find a basic, thorough guide or even to know which questions to ask. So I’ve attempted to put one together.
This covers the sort of stuff that most people know fairly instinctively once they’ve been round the querying block a few times or spent enough time doing research or hanging around writing Twitter—but that can be quite counter-intuitive when you’re just starting out.
If you’ve been querying for a while and you’re looking for something a bit less beginner-focussed, you might like my advanced querying tips, "how to take a query from 'nothing wrong' to 'something right'" which can be found here.
What sorts of manuscripts is this guide relevant for?
This guide is aimed at those trying to traditionally publish a prose-based fiction manuscript. Aspects of the process are different for non-fiction, picture books etc. And obviously, if you’re intending to self-publish, you don’t need an agent, so most of this is totally irrelevant.
What is “traditional publishing” and why do you need an agent?
Traditional publishing essentially means that a publishing house will publish your book. They’ll deal with final edits, the cover, the distribution and to some extent, the marketing. There’ll be no charge to you, and at least some form of payment. Most places will give you an advance upfront, then once the publishers have recouped the cost of that through book sales, you’ll start getting a cut of any additional sales. Some skip the advance.
There are some publishers—usually smaller and/or more specialist ones—that you can submit to directly. In most cases though, you need to submit to a literary agent, and if they take you on as a client, they’ll use their industry knowledge and contacts to submit to larger publishers on your behalf and ensure you get a decent deal. They won’t ask for money upfront, but will take a pre-agreed proportion of any earnings you eventually make. Throughout, I’ll be talking about agents, but the process is broadly similar if you decide to approach smaller publishers directly.
Who are you and why should I listen?
Honestly, I’m just someone with an agent and a few manuscripts under my belt. I don’t have a book deal yet, and I’m not an industry insider. But over the years, I’ve done a lot of querying (unsuccessfully with two manuscripts, before being successful with a third) and helped a lot of friends through the process.
This is designed to be a fairly basic and objective guide. It’s not intended to be full of insider secrets, a magic formula, or advanced tips. It’s about ensuring you know roughly what to expect and that you get the basics right.
One day, I’d love to write an individual post about each of the steps below, but for now, if nothing else, they should give you a starting point and help you know what to Google in order to get more detailed information.
But hasn’t querying changed a lot over the past few years?
Fair disclosure, I signed with my agent a couple of years ago and the general consensus is that while the process was never easy, it’s got worse since. Some people therefore argue that a lot of old advice is redundant. Essentially though, what’s changed is broadly slower response times, less chance of a “yes” and a greater chance of no response at all. So the sort of advice that might be a bit spurious is anything that attempts to be definitive about waiting times, hit rates, nudging, how many agents to query at once etc. I touch on this in steps 5 and 6, but try to be as objective and prescriptive as possible. I’m confident that the stuff outlined below is fundamental enough to be broadly unchanged.
STEP ONE — FINISH AND POLISH YOUR MANUSCRIPT
For fiction submissions, you need a complete, polished manuscript. Not just an interesting idea, not just a few chapters, not even just a first draft.
“Finished” is pretty self-explanatory—it needs to be able to be read from start to finish.
Quite how polished it needs to be is subject to debate. The manuscript doesn’t have to be perfect—chances are, both any agent you sign with and any publisher that gives you a deal will ask for changes. However, you need to have read through it a good few times and done enough self-editing of both the big picture and the detail to get it as good as you realistically can by yourself.
You also need to get a few extra pairs of eyes on it, in the form of critique partners and beta readers. Even as an experienced writer and thorough self-editor, it’s amazing the plot holes, inconsistencies and confusing parts you miss that others quickly pick up on.
Most agents will ask for the first five to fifty pages (or first three chapters) in the first instance, so it’s worth making sure those are extra-specially perfect. And that goes double for the actual first page
STEP TWO—WRITE A QUERY LETTER
A query letter is a professional, well-written letter of around 300 words, designed to tell your potential agent about your book and why they might be interested in it, in the hope that they’ll decide to read more.
It’s something that a lot of people get totally wrong, by omitting essential details, including lots of unnecessary information, or using an inappropriate style and format. It can be challenging to make a query really strong and compelling—again, this more advanced blog post of mine might be helpful on that front—but it’s relatively easy to avoid rookie mistakes and get the basics right.
Basically, the letter needs five sections:
1. Some basic “metadata”: the title of the manuscript, its genre, its age category, and its word count. Claiming that it transcends genres or will appeal to those aged 9 to 90 isn’t going to cut it, so make sure you:
· stick more or less to standard acceptable wordcounts (about 70-95k for most adult novels, though this can vary a lot by genre);
· pick one, standard age category (middle grade, young adult, adult)
· list one or two accepted genres or sub-genres (fantasy, thriller etc).
2. A short bio, setting out any notable writing credits (it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have any); anything that makes you particularly “qualified” to write the book; and perhaps bit of general biographical detail or a fun fact or two.
3. “comp titles”—ie. A couple of recently published books (not genre-defining, household name mega-sellers) that your manuscript is similar to and a brief explanation as to why.
4. Eventually, for each agent you send it to, some personalisation ie. a line or two on why you’re querying them in particular. Maybe they’ve stated they’re looking for books in your subgenre or with your themes or plot elements. Maybe they rep a similar book.
5. And most importantly—and most challengingly—the actual pitch, ie. A compelling explanation of what the book is about. This should be the main focus and take up perhaps 2/3rds of the letter
More on the pitch
In essence, think of the text on the back of a book or its Amazon page. There’s a real art to this, but the general advice is to introduce the main character, what they are trying to achieve, what’s standing in their way, and what the result will be if they fail. It often works well to present this as a difficult choice they need to make.
Unlike the synopsis, which we’ll come to in a moment, you’re not trying to tell the story from start to finish, just get the agent intrigued. Don’t get into themes, your inspirations, the process of writing etc—stay focussed on the heart of the story. There are no doubt always exceptions, but as a general rule, regardless of how the book is written, the pitch section should be in third person and in prose.
STEP THREE — WRITE A SYNOPSIS
A synopsis is a summary of the key events of the novel, from start to finish. It should generally be about two A4 pages long (single spaced) though you’ll see some requests for single-page ones, so you might want to create two versions.
It should focus on the main character and the main plot points, and mention as few characters by name as possible: generally, just the MC, antagonist, and love interest—or whoever is of similar narrative importance in your chosen genre.
Don’t go off at tangents, don’t get bogged down in description, keep it clear and easy to understand.
It needs to be well-written in terms of grammar etc, but don’t worry too much about voice or making it funny/scary/romantic/whatever. Its purpose isn’t to showcase your writing or sell the story, it’s to reassure the agent that there’s a proper beginning, middle, and end and that the plot makes sense throughout.
STEP FOUR — FIND SUITABLE AGENTS
Fit
Different agents focus on very different types of books. You need to find some who have a realistic chance of being interested in yours.
There are several ways to find some potential candidates. You can try some basic Googling of literary agent + your genre. You can carry out a similar search on manuscriptwishlist.com, where many agents have detailed profiles setting out what they’re looking for. You can stalk the related #mswl Twitter hashtag. And you can research which agents rep your favourite authors.
In deciding whether or not an agent is worth querying, it’s a balancing act between not wasting your time and theirs by querying agents who are totally unsuitable, versus not ruining your odds by only querying those who seem like an absolute perfect fit.
Don’t query agents who don’t rep your age category, even if your manuscript is an otherwise great fit. It’s a bit more subjective when it comes to genre. While it’s great if you can find someone who reps your precise sub-genre or even has an MSWL asking for specific relevant plot elements, as long as they rep your top level genre, they’re potentially worth a try. By which I mean, if an agent is asking for epic fantasy, and your manuscript’s got more of a low fantasy or possibly even urban fantasy vibe, it’s worth a shot. Whereas if it’s a cosy romance set in the real world with no fantastical elements whatsoever, then it really isn’t a good idea.
One caveat is that many agencies have a policy that you can only query one of their agents, so if you’ve found a potential fit, it can be worth quickly checking out the others at that agency, to make sure no one is even better.
Legitimacy
As well as fit, you sadly also have to make sure the agents you’re planning to query are legit. At this stage, you’re mostly looking for major red flags that suggest they might be actual scammers.
The most obvious one is any suggestion that you need to pay to query or sign. If you see that, run! Other warning signs are a crappy website, a lack of information about them online, a lack of any meaningful deals (unless they’re a junior agent at an established agency).
You can save the deeper research into subtler dodgy behaviour from otherwise respectable agents for when you get an offer of rep. As long as they’re not asking for money, you’re not really risking anything but your self-esteem by sending a query. However, if you want extra reassurance, it can be worth a quick look on Authors Beware and on Absolute Write Water Cooler.
STEP FIVE — TWEAK AND PERSONALISE YOUR SUBMISSION PACKAGE FOR INDIVIDUAL AGENTS AND GET IT OUT
You’ve got your core submission package, and you’ve got your list of agents. Now you need to start putting the two things together in order to get some queries out.
Most agents ask to see a query letter, synopsis, and some pages, either via email or, increasingly, through Querymanager, which is an online form. But they can have quite different rules on things like the number of pages they’d like to see, how long the synopsis can be, and whether material should be attached or pasted into the body of the message. This should all be set out on the agency website. Check their individual instructions and follow them to the letter.
Add at least a token bit of personalisation to the query letter (but don’t agonise over this, it’s the pitch they really care about), and triple check you’ve got the agent’s name right, including pronouns if you’re addressing them by their surname.
You’ll also find that some agents who make use of Querymanager ask some unusual questions, like asking for a playlist related to your book!
Process
Two questions people always want an answer to is how many agents you should query in total and the extent to which you should space out your queries. And this is the bit where, as someone who was querying a few years ago rather than more recently, I want to tread quite carefully, as I think the answer to both has changed over time. It also varies a lot by genre etc, and I’d be wary of anyone who sought to give an absolute answer.
With all those caveats in mind, in terms of overall numbers, I’d stick my neck out and say mid-to-high double figures. Much lower and you’re probably not giving yourself a fighting chance. Much higher and you’ve probably exhausted the realistic list of those likely to be remotely decent fits.
In terms of process, the advice was always to send them out in blocks of five to ten. The idea was that based on the number of full requests, you could decide whether or not the query needed work. In theory, you could also act on any feedback received, though over years of querying, I can’t remember a single instance of receiving actionable feedback on a rejected query letter.
The consensus seems to be that slower or non-existent responses makes this approach redundant. Personally though, I’d still advise some degree of blocking for your own sanity. You don’t want to send fifty queries in one go, then think of the perfect comp title you missed. And if you only ever send one at a time, chances are you’ll get nowhere. I think aiming for about ten a month strikes a nice balance between manageability and momentum building, but precise numbers and spacing are less important than finding a structure that works for you.
One tip that’s definitely still relevant? Maintain some sort of spreadsheet so you can keep track of who your queried when.
STEP SIX — BE PATIENT AND POLITE
Once you’ve got your first set of queries out, the waiting game starts. What you’re hoping for is that at least some agents will request the full manuscript.
Though there are exceptions, you’ll generally find it takes a long time (think months rather than weeks) to hear back. Some will never respond, taking a “no response means no” approach. And when you do hear back, with the best will in the world, a fair few of the responses will be a “no”. And at this stage, they usually won’t give any feedback.
All of this is incredibly stressful. Resist the temptation to ask for feedback or—hopefully this bit goes without saying—to send an angry or rude response. It’s also sensible to avoid venting on social media or other public forums—save it for private conversations with your CPs or similar.
Self-care is beyond the scope of this article, but practice some, whatever that means for you, whether it’s working on a new manuscript or staying the hell away from the computer.
Of course, if all goes well, you might eventually get some full requests. Just thank the agent and fire over that fully polished manuscript. And then prepare yourself for yet more waiting—responses to fulls often take even longer than responses to queries. Though ghosting and form rejections still happen on fulls, you’re generally more likely to get a response and, if it’s a rejection, it’s more likely to include at least some feedback.
On the other hand, you might get a response saying that the agent loved the manuscript would like to have a call…
STEP SEVEN — CALL AND SIGN
A suggestion of a call is basically the prelude to an offer of representation. It’s a chance for the agent to set out their vision for the book and ask you some questions about proposed future projects. It’s also an opportunity for you to ask them some questions about their working style and get a sense of whether you’d be a good fit and to ask for the contact details of current clients who’d be happy to give a reference. Come prepared with some answers and some questions.
All being well, at the end of the call, you’ll be made an offer. If you’ve got submissions out with other agents, you’ll want to give them a chance to offer or decline too. So you’ll agree a timeframe for this with the initial offering agent (usually around two weeks) then quickly email the other agents on the back of the original email chain, with something like “Offer of representation” in the subject line, and a quick, polite message updating them on what’s happened and giving a deadline for a response.
And you strap in for what’s likely to be one of the most exciting and yet stressful weeks of your life.
For once, you’ll usually find you get speedy responses in this scenario. Anyone who’s potentially interested will probably also want to have a similar call to the one you had with the initial agent. Then once time’s up, you make a decision between the initial agent and anyone else who’s made a subsequent offer, you let everyone know, and you get a contract signed.
And then once you’ve stopped screaming and drinking champagne and you’ve posted a cheery message on social media, you work with the agent to get ready to go on submission to agents, which is a whole other story…
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