10 Authors on The Querying Experience
10 Authors on The Querying Experience
Ten authors who have queried literary agents tell us what their experience was like. They share the good, the bad, the triumphs and the heartbreak. They tell us about being accepted and how they handled the rejection. The give tips for self care during this time and share advice for authors going through this process. It is also interesting for readers to hear about the process of becoming a published authors. Scroll down to read more!
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Eileen Brill
Paulette Stout
When I began writing novels, I queried my first two manuscripts. The "no simultaneous submissions" thing was a total drag, but I dutifully followed the instructions. God forbid my rule breaking would interfere with my dream of becoming a published author! Mind you, I'm not a patient person. I grew up in Manhattan, raised by a man who would barge into the kitchen at restaurants rather than wait for the waitstaff. No joke! So after years of waiting, I did what my dad would do: I barged into the publishing kitchen and cooked my own meal by indie publishing my novel. Now there are eyes in 23 countries on six continents reading my words, and my second novel will be out this year. I wish everyone querying the best of luck on your journey. But if it doesn't work out--or you're tired of waiting--do know that there are other ways to reach readers. They deserve the opportunity to gobble up your words, so let's not disappoint them!
Rachel Kowert
I have found the querying experience to be really difficult and discouraging. I have queried well over 100 agents with little to no response given. This is after taking courses and reading articles on how to write an effective query letter. I've asked friends and colleagues about their experiences with their querying and spent months perfecting the perfect pitch... to crickets. It is difficult to handle the onslaught of rejections that often comes from this process (and has come from this process with me). My most effective coping strategy has been to sit in the disappointment for a bit then re-evaluate my work and my queries. Then, it translated in to a successful kickstarter campaign that raised more than $25,000 in 30 days to self publish my stories.
Maren Cooper
Several years ago I was taking classes at a Literacy Center and was offered an opportunity to pitch my book to selected agents brought in to be available to students with works in progress. I learned to hone my query to get to the heart of the story and end with a hook, and do it in a minute or two--the elevator speech.
I was matched with four agents in my genre. It was nerve-wracking to stand in a line of prospects hoping to find an agent who would discover their work and lead them to fame and fortune. Of the four agenda I queried, two did ask for a follow-up chapter, one didn't respond at all, and one said they were not taking any work in my genre after all.
After that, I spent six months searching for the magic agent that would lead me through the publishing morass. However, even after mastering an app called Query Tracker, I felt deflated by the process and decided to move on.
I landed with She Writes Press, a hybrid publisher who, of course, still needed a pitch, but I'm happy to say I like the partnership with a publisher that allows author control or input on all of the steps leading to publishing a book. I published my first book "A Better Next" in 2019 and my second "Finding Grace" will be out in July of 2022.
I view the 'query an agent' process a valuable part of the journey, and time well spent.
Jodie Eckleberry-Hunt, PhD, ABPP
I describe my experience as a new author as involving multiple levels of soul-crushing pain with a sprinkle of hope. The first level was the seemingly endless rejections upon querying agents. My first go-round was six or so years ago. I probably queried 150 agents, and I was rejected or ignored by every. single. one. Because I was high from completing my manuscript, the devastation was absolutely demoralizing. Each time I was rejected, I just found someone new to query. It felt like an abusive relationship. After a while, I just gave up and started querying publishers that didn't require an agent, and I was signed with a publisher sans an agent.
After my first book, Move on Motherf*cker: Live, Laugh, and Let Sh*t Go, was published, I decided to query again, and I found the wonderful Tina Wainscott with the Seymour Agency on my first round of re-querying. Despite getting published, I believed having an agent would best position me to continue my writing career. Yet, finding an agent who represents self-help was difficult, and to make matters worse, many only wanted to represent authors who had achieved fame, which definitely was not me.
As I am one to look on the bright side, I told myself that I had to go through the process of querying and being rejected to keep myself grounded. I tried very hard to learn from the pain and not to spend time over-analyzing the rejections. Truly, it is about finding an agent who is excited about your work and has connections to get that work published. It may have zero to do with the quality of the work. Self-care became primarily about energy conservation. It was helpful to read blogs and other confessions about the process from authors to know that I was not alone.
It also helps to have activities outside of writing.
Tina taught me that an agent's job is to be an objective guide. It is important not to be desperate and sign a contract without having it vetted. Tina is my cheerleader-in-chief, and she reminds me to be patient. An agent well-matched for you will know all the right publishers for your particular work.
My second book, Getting to Good Riddance: A No Bullsh*t Breakup Survival Guide, comes out July 2022, AND Badass Stories: Grit, Growth, Hope, and Healing in the Sh*tshow comes out in February 2023. You might think this is success, but it only leads to the next level of pain..... sales.
After writing the book, I thought the hard work was done. It was not. The more challenging piece is trying to get the word out. I'm more introverted, and admittedly, I had little interest in self-promotion. I had to work through the pain of getting over that because if the book didn't sell, I would not be able to get any more published. I opted to use Books Forward for a publicity campaign, and found this enormously helpful. Promotion alone is a full-time job.
My advice? You have to go in embracing the suck. It hurts deeply to birth a book and not find a home for that book. It hurts even more when it doesn't sell after all of the effort. I often ask myself if I'd known it was this hard, would I have done it. Maybe not, but I am so glad that I did. Do it for yourself. Do it because you want to do it. Conserve your energy. Diversify. The rest is icing.
Jen Craven
The query trenches are not for the faint of heart. They’re a rollercoaster of emotion—sometimes you’re flying high, other times you’re plummeting into self-doubt. For me, the querying process has been a test of what I want out of my writing career. It’s forced me to examine my goals—MY goals, not the goals of other authors, or what the industry “says” is the right way to do things.
I started querying my latest manuscript the first week of February, and was thrilled with great momentum out the gates. Multiple full and partial requests from some amazing agents. I sent them with fingers crossed. And then the waiting started.
Full stop: the waiting is brutal. I’m not a patient person. Thankfully, I’ve been able to focus my attention on other things (work, kids, new book draft!), which has been a hugely helpful distraction.
When a rejection comes in, I print it out and save it. These are proof of my journey. I highlight the positives—one pretty big agent said, “I read your entire manuscript and really enjoyed it. Your writing is very good.”
But…
Publishing is more than just good writing. It’s so much more about timing and taste and sellability.
So I wait some more, and I roll choices around in my mind. One of my biggest pieces of advice for any querying authors is to find a community of like-minded writers who can support you. I never would have been able to navigate the emotional toll of the highs and lows without my writing friends.
Joey Jones
I started writing this book during a very difficult time (we were losing a loved one, slowly). We (I work with my husband, Mark) started querying too soon, but got a very nice response from an agent in the first wave who said she loved the book but didn't know where to place it, and asked to see our next book. She also said "...if you don't have an agent by then, but you will." We've racked up some of the best rejections in publishing, personal, encouraging letters, but have yet to find an agent.
We submitted it to a writing contest (PNWA - Pacific Northwest Writers Association) and while we didn't win, we did get coverage that was interesting. One was thoughtful, insightful, made some actionable suggestions that made sense to us, and very encouraging (the reader said s/he loved the book, it's hilarious -- with details of what humor landed and why -- and couldn't wait to see it in print). The other was so pointlessly negative it was funny and included, "Why does this book even exist?" Basically, that reader didn't think Women's Fiction, especially funny Women's Fiction, should be a thing in the universe. Got the feeling s/he felt the same about women in general.
Light or dark, our work is funny (I even wrote a political humor blog, "Dear Donny," for several years. It's fun hearing that you have readers in the White House who don't dare let anyone know they read your work. Felt very cloak-and-dagger for someone as naturally boring as I am). It's tough to place funny Women's Fiction that isn't straight-up Chick Lit. We've heard a number of times that the book is laugh-out-loud funny but the agent doesn't know where to sell it. In my experience, that's common -- there's not a "find talent and nurture it" vibe.
Agents want market-ready books they immediately know a buyer for. It's been explained to me by one agent that any time we hear "I wasn't as passionate about it as I need to be," we should interpret it as "A potential editor/publisher to sell this to didn't come to mind immediately." Mostly what we've heard is "this is funny and I love it, but I don't know who to submit it to." Along the way, this book was a semi-finalist for ScreenCraft's international competition for books "with cinematic potential."
We've been fortunate enough to get some editing help from a very talented writer/editor and are right now rewriting under the guidance of our WFWA mentor. It's taken longer than I would have expected, but much of that was both of us getting COVID early in the pandemic, and developing Long Covid. For a while, I couldn't write anything due to Covid "brain fog." I feared I had lost the ability to write at all, but have recently begun to be able to write again and we're working on three different books in addition to re-editing the first. Considering how close I came to dying (Mark's initial case wasn't as bad), I count being back in the saddle as a win.
In the end, we may self-publish, but will go through one more round of querying and try some small presses before we do. One of our other books was always intended for self-publishing, so we're working on learning the ins and outs of that as well. My experience is in non-fiction print and radio, Mark's in radio and tv, so we're using this process as an education in fiction writing. We have "the chops" as writers, but there are techniques specific to each sort of writing. Fortunately, we've both edited non-fiction and advertising, and written both, so we've been through the editorial process often enough not to take it personally. What matters is that the work be as good as it can be.
We've only had two really negative responses, and they make us laugh. If you get that out-of-left-field, truly nasty query response, I highly recommend printing it out and composting it. The worms can turn it into something useful.
Laura Whitfield
My most recent experience with querying agents was when I finished my debut memoir, Untethered: Faith, Failure, and Finding Solid Ground, back in 2019. At the time I wanted to publish traditionally and felt I might have the best chance if I found an agent to shop my manuscript. Because I’d just spent two and a half years writing my book, I didn’t have the motivation to sit down and work on a book proposal. I used an industry resource to find agents who represented memoir and only contacted agents who would take a query letter, sample pages and/or chapter. I carefully read over each agency website and agent bio and contacted the agents who seemed like they might be a good fit, both creatively and personally.
I created a spreadsheet and tracked the agents I contacted, their contact information, what I sent them, and the date. I also included when I could expect to hear back from them. I reached out to about fifty agents over a seven month period and got some positive responses, but no offers. At that point, I’d had interest from several hybrid publishers, so I decided to publish with She Writes Press. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
I’ve been writing and submitting things I’ve written for thirty years, so rejection really doesn’t bother me. I look at it like dating or interviewing for a job. If it’s not right, I tell myself there’s something better out there. It’s best to move on and find someone who is excited about me and my work.
I am now working on a second memoir. I plan to write a book proposal this time and send it out to agents. Querying agents is just part of getting published. It comes with the territory. Since I love what I do, I’ll write, stay hopeful, and keep pressing “send.”
Mansi Shah
Did it twice and had rejections because people thought there wasn't room for an indian author.
Laura Drake
I was rejected 417 times (over three books) before I sold. That last book went on to win awards. I now teach classes in how to query.
