đŚââŹđGiveaway! Plus My Agent Search Experience and Query Letterđ
đŚââŹđGiveaway! Plus My Agent Search Experience and Query Letterđ
Want to know how I snagged my agent? Want a win an ARC of my book? This is your week!
Hey, yâall! Itâs March. Which means February is over. (That was fast.) Annnnnd I didnât send out a newsletter in February. Yikes. But hey, life around me kind of blew up (in a good and bad way), and Iâm just now getting my head above water. I sure hope yâall can forgive me. Iâm here now and thatâs whatâs important, right? Plus, I think Iâve got a good one for todayâs âMy Writing Journey.â (Or so I hope you think itâs a good one.) Itâs about my âMy Agent Search Experience and Query Letter.â Isnât that like finding a pot of gold, when you can read a successful query letter?!? I sure thought so when I was new in my journey. And I hope my advice/tips/tricks help you out in your agent search.
BUT before we get there, I want to tell you that my publisher is doing another Goodreads giveaway for my book!
Enter between March 1-21 for a chance to win one of 10 ARCs. Go here to enter.
My Writing Journey
While I wouldnât consider myself a query expert by any means, I have gotten three agents over the last ten years. And my query letter for In the Hour of Crows landed me an agent who got me a six-figure deal (for one book) at auction with a big publisher. So Iâd call my query letter a success. Everyoneâs experience in the query trenches is different. This is my story. This is what worked for meâŚthree times. (If you want to hear more about my experience working with three different agents, you can check out my November newsletter âNavigating Through 3 Agentsâ here.)
AGENT SEARCH
There are so many agents and agencies out there, itâs hard to know who is legit, who is good at their job, who is a go-getter, who is a heavy-hitter, who is a right fit, etc. etc. etc. Just because an agent is at a big agency, doesnât mean they can sell your book. And just because they are at a boutique agency, doesnât mean they canât sell you big. All that to say, know what you want out of your career.
When I first started, I just wanted to get published. The second time around, I wanted someone who take my career to the next level, which for me meant an agent at a bigger, well-known agency.âŚAgent #2 couldnât sell a book for me though. By the time I got to my third agent, I was tired of fucking around. I had wasted a lot of time, and I wasnât getting any younger. I wanted someone who could get me a big deal with a âBig 5â publisher, period. (Yes, I know itâs not five now.) That also meant I had to write a really fucking good book they couldnât resist. (Iâll write more about that in a future newsletter.)
It takes time to comb through all the agents/agencies out there. I started with Manuscript Wishlist and Query Tracker. There was also my old, tried-and-true favorite, Literary Rambles, a blog thatâs been around forever. My secret tip for the best way to find an agent, look at the books by authors that are similar to your book and find who represented them. Most authors put their agentâs info on their contact page but not always. If not, look in the acknowledgements of the book, they usually thank their agent. I spent hours at the bookstore, looking through the acknowledgements of books similar to mine. Then I researched those agents to see if they would be a good fit for me.
WRITING A QUERY LETTER
Oh my gosh, you thought Iâd never get here! Gotta save the good stuff for last. There are tons of blog posts out there from agents that talk about what makes a good query letter. While everyone has a preference of how they write a query, most have the same basic elements: genre and word count, the one sentence pitch, 150-300 word summary, your bio. But I also think itâs important include a person note to the agent, and of course, close your letter with a professional sign off.
Genre and word count is pretty straight forward: My current project, [title of book], is a [word count] [genre]. Thatâs it. Your bio should relate to publishing and not personal info. And for me, with the first agent, I had ZERO publishing credentials or education. But I was an expert at being Southern, seeing as how I was born and raised in Tennessee, so I mentioned my Southern background that went into writing my Southern YA rom com.
THE PITCH
It was hard enough to come up with 75K words to write a book, and now you have to summarize it in one sentence. Like, Jesus, really? A pitch is simply the hookiest parts of your story. Give me six specific words that describe the hookiest parts of your book. Iâll go first: Appalachia Folk Magic Death Talker Murder. Now put that in one sentence: An Appalachian woman who can talk the death out of the dying must use her gift to solve the murder of her cousin. That was my pitch, and every time I used it I got a strong, positive response. Still having trouble doing that for your book? Practice doing it for your favorite/popular books until you get it the hang of it.
THE BOOK SUMMARY
Are you struggling to write your bookâs summary? Welcome to the club. Itâs essentially the jacket copy of your book. And if jacket summary is easy for you, good for you, hereâs your cookie, skip to the next section. For me it was a bitch to write, but I had to put my big girl panties on and do it. It took me several tries to get it right.
There are tons of blogs out there that will tell you how to write a summary of your book, so I wonât labor ALL those points either. This is how I did itâŚI cheated. Yep, you read that right. I tried, yâall. But when I summarized my book, it just came out as a word salad. But Iâm really good at reverse engineering stuff. So I looked up ALL the books that were similar to mine and dissected them, then Frankensteined together different parts from all those summaries until I had the good bones to my own book summary. Then I tweaked it into something that was pretty descent. After that, I sent it to someone who had read my book and someone who hadnât. Then I tweaked again. Until eventually I got something that I thought was pretty good. And hilariously, my query summary and actual my jacket copy are totally different. My editor did a MUCH better job than me so if you donât get it perfect, itâs not the end of the world. (Final jacket copy included at bottom.)
PERSONAL NOTE TO AGENT
To me, this is an important part of the query. It not only tells an agent why youâre querying them, itâs an opportunity to make a genuine personal connection. While it can be as simple as âI saw you were looking for Xtype of book, and I think you might like my story.â Or âI see that you represent Xtype books, and I think you might also like my book.â I think a stronger personal note opens more doors. Here are a few âpersonal notesâ I wrote to agents. (Iâve Xâd out the names, but you get the gist.)
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER
What order you put all these elements can vary, this is how I did it. I created my own form query, where all I had to do was change out the agent name and personal note. It looked something like this:
Dear [agent name],
Personal note. Genre and word count. One line pitch.
Summary of my book.
My bio. Close of letter and thank you.
Sincerely,
My name
Sample pages, copy and pasted in email. (Unless there were other instructions.)
And without further ado, my query letter to my agent, Jill Marr (aka Badass Extraordinaire) with the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
MY EXPERIENCE
My first agent took me a year to get. My second and third agents, I got after two months of querying. Iâve heard of people getting agents after a week and others itâs taken years. I would venture to guess the average time-frame would be a year. But thatâs just a guess.
MY QUERY STATS
Third Agent: 30 queries over a two and half month period, 18 rejections*, 10 no response, 8 full requests, 1 partial request
Second Agent: 29 queries over a two month period, 9 rejections, 13 no response, 6 full requests, 1 partial request
First Agent: 58 queries over a one year period, 27 rejections, 11 no response, 15 full requests, 5 partial requests
*Rejections are those who rejected from query alone, does not include the full/partials that were later rejected.
MY QUERY DATA
Iâm always studying data, and here is what I found from my three query experiences. Iâve gotten two full requests five minutes after I sent a query. Quite a few within one day. Several after three days. And a few more at about the two week mark. Anything longer than two weeks was typically a rejection or no response.
My first batch of queries went out to seven agents, targeting my top agents first. Go big or go home. I got three immediate requests right off the bat (one within five minutes, one within a day, the other on day three.) So I paused sending out anymore for two weeks. One of those agents read my book in two days and responded on a Saturday that while he loved my writing, atmosphere, and concept of the story, he didnât fall in love like he hoped. But it showed me that agents do work on the weekend. All three of those first agents got back to me within two weeks of requesting with rejections, so I resumed my search. More requests for fulls trickled in over the next 6 weeks as I sent out queries in batches of 3-5 every week typically when I received a rejection, only pausing when I got a request. It was around week five that I sent out a request to my current agent. It took her three weeks to get to it, but she immediately requested a full, three days before Christmas.
THE CALL
Within 24 hours, she was emailing, asking how many agents had it and what stages of conversations we were in. She wanted to know if I planned to write YA again or strictly adult. And she wanted to know what other books/ideas I was working on. This is where I fibbed, a little. (Sorry, Jill!) When she requested, four agents were still reading and considering. But in my email response to her I saidâwhich was not a lieâthat seven agents had requested it, she was number eight. And two of those had followed up, asking similar questions she had. Immediately she requested we set up a call after the Christmas holiday. Over the next two days I got several more emails from Jill. That Saturday, on Christmas Eve no less, she was telling me that she already knew which editors she wanted to send it to. She hadnât even offered me representation yet! She also told me that she thought the book would sell fast and sell big. She was right.
We had our call five days later, where she offered me representation. The four agents who had it, I had let them know I was in talks. I never heard back from any of them, not even when I sent a follow up email letting them know that I was withdrawing my submission as I had been offered representation. Those were big agents at big agencies and nothing back. Not a thanks for letting me know. Good luck. Nothing.
While Iâll talk about my submission process in a future newsletter, we ended up going on submission at the end of January 2023, and two months later we sold, at auction to a big publisher for six-figures. I know I keep mentioning that, but here we are a year later and I still canât believe this happened to me and my book. It has been a surreal ride, to say the least.
A FEW EXTRA THOUGHTS
(Holy shit this newsletter is long! Iâm sorry! Feel free to stop reading. lol)
Know when to break the query rules. I felt so strongly about my opening pages hooking a reader. I knew if I included them, an agent would ask for more. And I was right. So even if an agent didnât ask for pages, I sent them at least ten. If I didnât hook them with my opening pages, then my book wasnât for them. Itâs that simple. And you know when they say a âno from one is a no from us allââŚyeah, I didnât always listen to that either, and thatâs how I got my second agent. (With that said, ONLY query one agent at the same agency at a time.)
Be ready to wait. Yep, lots of waiting and thatâs okay. Itâs a process. It takes time.
Get a thick skin and quick. This isnât personal (though it feels like it.) A ânoâ is not a reflection of you or your work. It simply means this agent didnât love your book. There are certain books you love or donât, right? Same goes for them. And yeah, itâs going to sting when your âdream agentâ tells you no. But in the end, your dream agent is the one that freaking loves your book.
Donât expect feedback. Itâs a rare thing to get feedback. And honestly, most feedback I did get, it was so generic, it wasnât really helpful.
Donât expect to hear back from agents at all. In the past, most agents would respond with a form letter rejection, but over the years thatâs changed. Too time-consuming to send a form rejection, I suppose. But even the agents who requested my manuscript never responded to my âsubmission withdrawâ after I had found representation either. Which I find unprofessional but it seems to be the standard now. (Though it wasnât five years ago during my second agent hunt.)
All you need is one yes. With all three agents they all contacted me within 24 hours of receiving the full manuscript, absolutely in love with my story and wanted to set up a call. I obviously did something right. Between writing a great book and a strong query letter, I snagged an agent.
Like I said in the beginning, everyoneâs experience is different. But I hope hearing my story will help ease your query process and hopefully give you a little hope.
Hereâs my final jacket copy today. As you can see, while itâs similar, I think itâs much better and more accurate than my query letter.
Bookish News
Last month I got to attend the American Booksellers Association conference in Cincinnati, OH. I had a fantastic time meeting so many great booksellers. I got to sign a few of my ARCs for the first time. There was so much excitement and buzz for this book that I wanted to cry. (Cause Iâm a big baby, yâall, itâs true.) I canât wait for In the Hour of Crows to be on the independent booksellers shelves. Thank you to all the booksellers who make my career possible. đđŚââŹ
AND I got to meet some amazing authors there, too.
Save the Date
Iâm having not one but TWO book launch celebrations, and I would love for you to join me! One to celebrate locally, here in Southern California. And a second book launch party in Tennessee to celebrate with my hometown friends and family. So mark your calendars!
Ticketed event. Link to reserve your seat coming soon! Check my events page for the up-to-date information.
For more information on this event, go to my Hometown Event page here.
You can also RSVP with Novel on their Facebook event page here.
What Iâm Loving Right NowâŚ
Yâall, this Celebration Cornfetti popcorn by the Popcorn Factory is SOOOO yummy. I found it at TJ Maxx, and Iâm addicted. Run there now and buy every bag! Youâre welcome.
For the ABA conference I went to in mid February, I wanted a fun but comfortable outfit to walk around in. I LOVE this tiger sweatshirt and high-waisted bodycon skirt from Amazon. So cute and so comfy. I did the âtuck the sweatshirt under your braâ trick for a cropped look.
March 5th is almost here! I cannot wait to get my hands on this book! The Devil and Mrs. Davenport is Paulette Kennedyâs next book. I loved her The Witch of Tin Mountain, and I know Iâll love this one, too.
Hey look, you made it to the end! Good job. Thanks for reading, and Iâll talk to yâall again soon.
xo,
Dana
P.S. I have a secret Iâm dying to tell you. đ¤