My Top Tips for Querying (Part 1)
Here are a few of the top tips I share with my clients when they start querying, in no particular order. I’ll do this again as more strike me.
Do not get hung up on your “dream” agent. All you probably know about them so far is what they’re doing for other authors. You need to find out what they can do for you. There is absolutely no such thing as a “dream” agent until you find someone that loves your book as much as you do.
Query in small batches. 5-10 agents at a time over 3-4 weeks. You want to give a good number of them a chance to respond so you can tweak if there is a problem. Queries should always be considered works in progress and if you’re not getting a good number of responses from each batch, your query isn’t working. Make sure you still have plenty of agents to try after you fix it.
Send your query and submission package to a different email address or a friend before you start officially querying. You need to make sure the formatting doesn’t turn wonky when you email it.
Don’t use books you hate as comparison titles. That feels disingenuous to me and what if you land an agent who loves a book that you hate? You don’t need to have the exact same taste, but why start your relationship on questionable grounds? There are plenty of books in the world. Choose books you like and would be proud to have next to yours on a shelf.
Even if you don’t have any real writing credits, share something about yourself at the end of your query. Just a few sentences to give agents a chance to get to know you. As an acquiring editor and now as someone who still reads queries for agents, I love to know even just a little bit about the person whose words I’m spending time with.
Keep it short! A query should be no longer than one page, ideally starting with an intro paragraph that includes word count and comparison titles, one or two story paragraphs, and then a closer with a quick bio.
One size doesn’t fit all! Make sure you personalize each query letter and if you read and loved a book an agent represents, tell them!
That’s all for now! Share your own tips in the comments.
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Thank you, this is a great list. But I'm so intimidated by this process. How do you find the agents to query in the first place?
Great tips, especially about how the query is actually a WIP. I have a quick question. If a published author (one who is critically acclaimed, writes in my genre, but isn’t a household name) has already offered to blurb my book, should I add that to my query? If so, where? The first paragraph (hook) or last paragraph (cook)? Thanks!