Five Things You Should Know About Literary Agents and the Querying Process

Welcome to Five On Fridays, my weekly straight-no-chaser newsletter where I help demystify the publishing industry for new writers and early-career authors. Let’s jump right in.

Querying—the process by which writers submit their work to agents with the hopes of landing representation—is not for the faint of heart. It requires a thick skin and the patience of a saint. And then there’s the ghosting, the term used to describe never hearing back from an agent after querying, sometimes even after that agent has requested a full manuscript. 

But while form rejections and being ghosted by an agent can feel like personal slights, they’re not. The fact is, agents have a very difficult job. Not only do they have to read dozens (sometimes hundreds) of queries on a monthly basis, they also have to manage their existing clients, negotiate contracts, and deal with their own rejections when the acquiring editors they’ve submitted to pass on their clients’ work. And when you realize that most agents are commission-based, meaning they only make money when a book sells, you’ll begin to understand why it’s impossible for them to respond to every single query and email, let alone respond with a personal note or critique. 

The more I work with agents, the more I realize there’s a lot writers don’t understand about literary agents and querying, so here are five things that shed some light on the job and the process.

Agents receive a LOT of queries

A typical agent might receive anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 queries annually, with high-profile agents receiving more than twice that. I was once on a video conference with an agent discussing a client project, and at the end of the call, she told me that while we’d been talking, she’d received fifteen queries. In less than an hour. It was a reminder of how overwhelming things can get for agents, even the most well organized. 

Many writers don’t follow the rules when querying

Most agents who are open to queries have profiles on their agency’s website. These profiles typically list the genres they’re seeking, the kind of books and themes they’re looking for, and their submission guidelines. Query Tracker and Query Manager now make it much easier for writers and agents to send and receive queries, but you’d be surprised by how many writers try to circumvent the rules by emailing or even calling agents, unsolicited. I think the thought process of writers who do this is along the lines of their story or writing being so spectacular, the rules don’t apply to them. Trust me, they do. And I know from speaking to agents that unsolicited emails that circumvent agency rules are deleted unread.

Agents get rejections too

As mentioned above, agents whose clients are on submission get rejections too. All the time. When an agent goes on submission with an author’s manuscript, they are, in essence, querying acquiring editors. They are submitting their client’s work for acceptance. They’re hoping the same thing writers hope when they query agents: the editor will see the potential in the project and want to acquire it. And if, as some statistics state, editors acquire less than one percent of submitted manuscripts, then agents have to learn to accept rejection too. 

The best time to query

The one thing agents seem to universally agree upon is that the right time to query your manuscript is when it's complete. Querying an incomplete manuscript could result in a request (Yay!) for a story you now need to rush to complete (Boo!—ask me how I know). Other than that, there really aren’t too many hard and fast rules about when to query an agent. As I mentioned above, obviously, don’t query an agent when they’ve said they aren’t open to queries. During the summer, publishing tends to take a break, and many agencies and publishers close to queries. Same thing around the holidays. But not all, so it’s important to review agency websites and query tracker to determine if the agent you’re interested in querying is open.

You can’t let the numbers stop you

As with most things in publishing, if you only look at the numbers, it’s easy to lose faith. Frankly, stats about how many queries get rejected and how many writers don’t get agented are enough to make even the most stalwart writers second guess themselves. But for us, numbers aren’t the story, the story is the story. So my advice is, be aware of the statistics, but don’t fear them. Instead, use them as fuel to ignite your determination to succeed in this industry, no matter what it takes.
 

That wraps up this week’s Five On Fridays. Thank you for subscribing and reading. If you found this newsletter helpful, please share it on social media and forward it to your writer friends. Happy writing!

-Grace