Get a Literary Agent: The Complete Guide to Securing Representation for Your Work (15 page)
Read Get a Literary Agent: The Complete Guide to Securing Representation for Your Work Online
Authors: Chuck Sambuchino
Generally the “worst” two times of the year to be querying agents are (1) the summer vacation months of July and August and (2) the holiday season at the end of the calendar year. This is simply because a lot of people in the publishing industry (agents, editors) are away from the office. And when they are in the office, they’re typically wrapping up tasks and not starting new ones. Still, your query isn’t going anywhere. Even if your e-mail ends up in a full-to-the-brim in-box, it will still be considered; the response will just be slower. So don’t worry too much about it, but if possible aim to avoid querying during these two times of the year.
It’s totally optional. An agent won’t be able to tell that your blog has low traffic. What she will be able to tell immediately is if the blog is professional, looks decent, and has some quality content. If the agent is interested in you and your work, she’ll want to know a bit more about you, so you can talk about yourself and your writing accomplishments somewhere on your website and blog.
At the end of your query letter, below your signature, you’ll put any contact info, such as your phone number. Feel free to include your blog URL here, too. Ultimately, if you’re on the fence and don’t want to direct an agent to your blog or under-construction website, then don’t. It won’t make much of a difference for fiction writers who are querying. It’s more important for nonfiction writers to include social media details, because their platform is so important in the pitching process.
You cannot make up anything or fabricate details. Don’t add anything if it’s a true story. If you went on a road trip and want to “add” a false narrative about how your stop through New York City involved a Bon Jovi concert and falling down drunk in Rockefeller Center, you simply can’t do it. If anyone fact-checks (vets) your story and is able to prove one detail convincingly false, then your entire memoir can be discredited.
What you can do in your memoir is eliminate things. If, in the middle of your story, your dog happens to die, you do not have to include that in the book. You can choose to simply bypass that event if it really doesn’t affect anything else. So feel free to leave a little or a lot on the cutting-room floor if you still feel like the book is being honest and contains no lies. But a fake character, fake dialogue, a composite character, etc., can get you into trouble with readers, agents, editors, and lawyers real quick.
It depends. If you’ve spent some time building up a pen name identity (website, e-mail, newsletter, social media), then you can send the letter under the pen name. Make sure that your name is consistent on all parts of the query: You do not want to sign your letter “Rita Smith” if your e-mail indicates that you are “Joyce Jones.” That will be confusing.
If having a pen name is a newer idea for you and you don’t have a substantial identity established under that name, submit the query under your real name. Then, when an agent calls you to discuss representation, you can explain that you believe it wise to use a pen name on your book(s). Make a case to the agent, and hopefully she will agree with you. If not, she surely will explain why using a pen name might not be the best idea.
If submitting via e-mail, write “Query for [Name]” in the subject line of the e-mail to immediately get it forwarded to the right place. An online submission form is trickier. You may not have the opportunity to utilize the equivalent of a subject line. If not, you can address the specific agent in the letter’s salutation. You can also have a line or two early in the query stating why you think that specific agent would be a good fit for your work. That way, if another rep at the agency gets the letter, she will see your lines at the beginning and realize that this query truly is meant to be read by the target agent, not simply anybody at the agency.
No. You should submit one complete, polished project at a time. Don’t contact an agent and tell her that you have “five completed novels, all of which are explained below.” Pitch one project at a time, or else your submission may come off as unfocused and scattershot—like you’re pitching five average novels instead of one polished, great novel (even though that may not be a fair assessment).
FINAL TIPS ON QUERY LETTERS
“I think the biggest querying no-no I’ve ever seen was when an author tracked down some sensitive personal information and included it in their cover letter. Eeep! As agents we absolutely love when authors do their research and get to know our interests, but you want to always make sure that what you include in your query letter is professional and that you don’t slip too far into the realm of the personal.”
—Shira Hoffman (McIntosh & Otis, Inc.)
“Here are my query pet peeves: (1) When my name is spelled incorrectly; (2) when a query begins with a ‘What would you do?’ question, like ‘What would you do if you came home and found a woolly mammoth eating your daffodils?’; (3) anything that tells me the writer is a hobbyist and not serious about making it as a professional writer; (4) when there are multiple typos and grammatical errors (one or two I can forgive, [but] anything more than that and I start to question how polished the manuscript would be if I requested it); (5) when pertinent information is left out of a query, such as the era for a historical, or whether the book is nonfiction or fiction; (6) when a writer tells me his work is ‘the greatest, the best, the most amazing, the next blockbuster’; let me judge that for myself, please.”
—Jessica Alvarez (BookEnds)
“I’m not fond of being called ‘Sir.’ But really, I just want to know what the manuscript is about without having to put a huge amount of effort into figuring it out. It shouldn’t be an Easter egg hunt for the plotline.”
—Bree Ogden (D4EO Literary)
“Here are the three most common problems I see in query letters: sending queries to agents who don’t represent your genre, queries that are way too long and/or include links to other sites where I am supposed to search for information, and queries that include a list of multiple books, many of which are incomplete.”
—Louise Fury (Bent Literary)
“It’s an automatic rejection for writers who send their query to tons of agents [in the same e-mail] or who simply paste a link to their blog or website and tell me to read their material. I have no interest in working with lazy people.”
—Cameron McClure (Donald Maass Literary Agency)
“[Most query letters are] too broad or unfocused. Query letters are always the most irresistible when they’re specific and evocative, without hitting you over the head with every detail of the book. Also, a modicum of research (‘I’m writing to you because you represented X book, which I loved …’) is a nice touch.”
—Daniel Lazar (Writers House)
“Do not ask an agent for a referral.”
—Karen Grencik (Red Fox Literary)
“There’s no need to apologize for yourself—‘I’m so sorry to take up your time.’ Please don’t threaten or beg me to ‘make your dream come true’ or try to pump up the project in ways that mean nothing—telling me how your mom or friends loved it or that you have 150 Facebook friends, all of whom you’re sure would buy a copy. Don’t get in your own way! Just tell me about the book, and we’ll go from there.”
—Holly Root (Waxman Leavell Literary Agency)
On query pet peeves: “(1) Talking too much about yourself and thereby giving the manuscript itself short shrift. (2) Focusing on what isn’t relevant. (3) Acknowledging that you were aware of the submission guidelines and then completely ignoring them.”
—Laura Bradford (Bradford Literary Agency)
“Queries that put up red flags say things like, ‘I made this story up for my grandchildren, and they love it!’ or ‘I don’t know anything about children or writing, but I’ve always wanted to be a writer.’ Conversely, showing you take your writing seriously and know the industry by attending SCBWI or other writing conferences, being in a writers group, or having an MFA in writing from a reputable school make your query stand out.”
—Quinlan Lee (formerly of Adams Literary)
“Even though I accept online queries, I still want the query to come in somewhere close to one page. I think that writers often think that because it’s online, I have no way of knowing that it’s more than a page. Believe me, I do. Queries that are concise and compelling are the most intriguing.”
—Regina Brooks (Serendipity Literary Agency)
“The number one query letter mistake is not telling me what the book is about. This includes being so vague that after a paragraph of description, I still can’t identify basic plot elements. It includes pasting the first five pages of the novel into the body of an e-mail with absolutely no cover letter. It includes sending me an e-mail informing me that your cover letter and synopsis are in the attached documents. It includes letting me know that you’re writing a novel but, in place of a pitch, you would like to send me a short story featuring the same protagonist. It includes telling me all about you and your reasons for writing the novel but nothing about the book itself. These are all query letters that do not function as query letters. A good query letter should mimic the hardcover-flap copy or paperback-cover copy you would expect to see on your book, should it be published. That’s because, ideally, your query letter becomes your agent’s pitch letter, which becomes your editor’s catalog copy, which becomes your book’s flap copy.”
—Stacia Decker (Donald Maass Literary Agency)
“The number one mistake I see with query letters is simply querying too early—before their writing and their book has matured to the point it needs to [reach]. Finding an agent should be the last step, not the first. If the book is truly wonderful and fully baked, the author will be able to find an effective advocate for it. Most people … are [querying] well before their work can stand up to honest scrutiny.”
—Dorian Karchmar (William Morris Endeavor Entertainment)
“A mistake [writers make] in queries is telling me what happens without spending time allowing me to invest in the character. Without that connection, I don’t care what happens. I also hate being told that everything out there (in the market) is bad or that the author couldn’t find anything good to read so they decided to write a book themselves. It’s insulting to me and to my clients.”
—Kate Schafer Testerman (kt literary)
STARTING YOUR FIRST CHAPTER RIGHT
If an agent gets past your query and synopsis, she’ll read and consider your first pages or chapters. This is called “requesting a partial” and usually involves the agent asking for a sample of twenty-five to fifty double-spaced pages. Sometimes the agent asks you to paste your pages in the initial e-mail correspondence, and sometimes she asks for solely a query first, only to ask for first chapters
after
the query gets her attention. No matter how the process goes, the key hurdle you face when an agent is reading your first chapters is making sure she likes what she sees.
So it’s vital to start your story strong, but the stakes are even higher than you might imagine. Let me share a dirty little secret that no one likes to talk about: Much more often than not,
agents are looking for any reason to reject you
. This is sad and frustrating but true. It all comes back to the daily responsibilities of an agent: They’re so incredibly busy that they don’t have much time to review query letters from new writers. As a result, an agent is looking for any mistake, any flaw, any chink in the armor—a reason to say no and cut that pile of letters down by one.
Making the process even more difficult for writers these days is the dark side of the Internet. While the Web has allowed you the ease of submitting queries widely and quickly, that “good news” for you is bad news when you consider that everyone everywhere has that same ease and that agents’ slush piles are getting bigger and bigger every year.
You can’t control everything as you try to overcome agents’ trigger-happy tendency toward “no” and the growing competition of other writers, but you can certainly do your best not to fall into any of the three most common traps that cause an agent to stop reading and reject your work.
- The book starts slow.
- The book starts outside-in and not inside-out.
- The book has an information dump.
Let’s look at each trap—and how to avoid it.
by Elizabeth Kracht (Kimberley Cameron & Associates)
This is a list of all the things that I notice and think about when I start to read a first chapter.
- Is there too much description?
- Do I feel grounded in the setting? (Do I know where I am?)
- Am I invested in the characters?
- Is the genre clear?
- Is there too much backstory?
- Does it start in the right place, or is there too much lead-in?
- Am I having trouble tracking characters?
- Am I being forced to pay attention to characters I’ll never see again?
- Is the pacing too slow? Does the character take five paragraphs to cross a room with nothing really happening in between?
- Are the characters cliché?
- Is the chapter too long or short?
- Is the dialogue sharp, fast-paced, and free of unnecessary tags and attributions?
- Is the manuscript formatted correctly?
- Is the voice over the top (commonly an issue in first-person narratives)?
- Do I have a strong sense of story and character arc?
- Is there enough happening in the chapter?
- Is the writing inspired?
Good writing involves covering all of the bases above and more.