Surprise! I Wrote a Book! How I Got My Literary Agent—Round One
I've since left that literary agency and re-signed elsewhere, but for the archive—my initial thoughts on querying, writing a book in secret, and those 0.06% odds.
Published March 8, 2023
Originally published in spring 2023, so excuse the wonky formatting—doesn't fully transfer well.
Photo by Lexi Priest.
Hey y’all!
After almost 12 years of running my book review blog, the inevitable* has happened: I’m officially represented by a literary agency for my (hopeful) debut novel. Now, plenty of my readers have no idea how this industry works because it’s a very strange/opaque/nonsensical one, so feel free to pick and choose the sections of this article that make sense to you.
The journalism, SEO-minded part of my brain wants to fill this with buzz words so that readers, writers, and other interested parties will click on this piece, but at the end of the day, it’s just some news I’m excited to share and I’d drive myself up a wall trying to get too technical about it.
Anyway. After writing 80k words over and over again for five years, it sometimes feels agonizing to write a thousand or so words attempting to summarize the process. (Edit: reader, it is not a thousand words. I just word-vomited for forever and it still doesn’t feel like it does a proper job summarizing these past few years of secrets.)
For those who are not part of the publishing world, here’s a brief explanation of how it works (for the most part.)
How Getting a Book Deal Works
For being such a massive industry, publishing’s difficult to understand. Part of the reason I generally did not tell anyone I was doing this is because it takes so much time and energy to explain.
I’m over-simplifying this process but (for most people writing fiction) this is how you get a book deal:
1. Write a book.
2. Revise it.
3. Think you’re done (you are not.)
4. Pitch it to literary agents.
5. Rinse and repeat steps 1-4 as needed.
6. Eventually sign with a literary agent.
7. Revise book with literary agent.
8. Think you’re done (you are not.)
9. Rinse and repeat steps 7-8.
10. Go on submission to publishing houses with literary agent.
11. Editors read and evaluate.
12. If editors want it, they’ll take it to sales meetings where they evaluate expected profits and losses. If all goes well here, it might get picked up.
13. If multiple houses/editors get to this stage, you may have an auction to determine who gets the book—but the submission process is another beast entirely, so I’ll explain that another time.
14. If book deal gets picked up, then you start to think about foreign rights and film rights, etc,.
A Quick and Dirty Explanation of Querying (and Terminology)
So, once you’ve just read the steps to a book deal (which are different for nonfiction books or public figures, sort of), here’s more about the agent process.
Essentially, to pitch to a traditional publishing house, you have to have an agent (in 95% of cases.) There are thousands of writers competing for a handful of agents, and you generally hope to sign with your agent for your entire career—which means agents have long lists of previous clients, many of whom may be your favorite writers, who get their attention first.
Finding new writers and reading new submissions takes second priority, which means that it can be a long time before they’re able to evaluate your work. Nowadays, thanks to COVID-19 burnout and corporate greed, agents and editors have double or even triple the workload they used to, meaning the chance of signing with them is even smaller because they’re too busy to be able to focus on anything beyond their existing clients and workload.
Agent: the first filter to a publishing house. Your agent negotiates on your behalf to publishing houses and editors with whom they have relationships. They also handle foreign and film rights, and their goal is to sell as many rights as possible that give you the most $$$. You as an author do not pay them, but they will get a 15% cut of your home country’s book deal and a 20% cut of any foreign rights. For film, my setup at least is that they would get 7.5% and the film agent would receive 7.5%. But film is a whole different beast, so we’ll tackle that later too.
When taking on new clients, agents will look at queries (defined below) from a writer in order to decide if they want to read a partial manuscript or full manuscript from that writer and consider taking them on as a client. They also may require a synopsis and comp titles in or along with the pitch. Some agents only accept submissions from authors who have attended conferences with them or who have referrals from their existing clients.
Query:The one-page pitch you write to the agent in order to get them to want to look at your work. In general, these are pretty standardized:
In one paragraph, you’ll say the book’s title, genre, age range, and word count—called the metadata. You might also (industry standard recommendation) provide multiple books as
comp titles that explain who your book would appeal to.
In the next two paragraphs or so, you’ll explain the plot and appeal, written like the jacket copy (description) of a book you’d pick up in the bookstore.
In the final paragraph, you’ll introduce yourself. You might say any awards or accolades you may have, your writing background if you have one, and what inspired the book—or what you do in your free time. You also may note any relevant research you performed to make your book accurate and/or better.
Most agents will ask for sample pages copied and pasted at the bottom of your letter—generally anywhere from 5 to 20 pages. Some might ask for a longer attachment (which I generally loved) of up to 50 pages so they don’t have to waste time asking for a partial before knowing if they’d vibe with your story.
Comp titles: similar books or IP publishers and agents will use to evaluate how your book would do in the market and where it would sit on shelves. Ex: for fans of The Hunger Games’s nonstop action and dystopian setting. (Poor example, but you get it.)
Synopsis: A one to three-page summary of cut-and-dried everything that happens in your book (any and all spoilers.) Some agents ask for a synopsis, which is arguably harder to condense than writing the book itself because everything feels important!
QueryTracker: An online platform many use to keep track of their querying data and compare it to others’. Ex: does this agent respond only to books they’re interested in? Have they not requested a full manuscript in over a year? Etc,.
Partial manuscript: Some agents request partial manuscripts first—generally 3 chapters or 50 pages of the book.
Full manuscript: Exactly what it sounds like. If they’re intrigued by your query and want to read the entire book, they’ll ask for the full manuscript, which you’ll then either attach through the submission portal or via email as a Word doc or PDF.
Querying Right Now Is Statistically Harder Than It Used to Be
Anyhow, querying started to get significantly harder in (in my opinion) about 2021. Because of the pandemic, many workers fell behind/burnt out/etc,. and publishing houses realized they could “save money” by not replacing them or paying them what they were worth. Because of that, the submission process to publishing houses got even slower because editors dealt with a significantly heavier workload (which was already unsustainable) with less pay. Paper costs also hiked because of supply chain issues, Amazon systemically devalued books, etc,. etc,. So submissions are waaaay slower than they used to be, which means agents are also (surprise!) taking on fewer new clients.
Also, the supply’s increased. A ton of people finally sat down to write the book they’d been dreaming of writing when they had all this time stuck at home during the pandemic, so there are also way more writers competing for way fewer spots.
The stats for signing with a literary agent used to be roughly 1 in 6,000 (although you query multiple agents, so it should be slightly higher.) That was cited before any of this happened, so I suspect it’s even smaller now. It used to be industry standard to hear back about any full manuscripts within six months or so, but now it’s even longer (a year??? Maybe?? Ever????) Significantly more people are getting ghosted too, which also includes me.
Authors who signed with their agents before about summer 2021 had completely different experiences and advice. It used to be recommended that you send out queries in “batches” to agents (I owe a whole new blog post to my querying strategy—which I will share!) and then wait to see what happened. If you got a handful of fulls from that batch, your query/pitch was likely working. If you got a handful of requests for more material and then no offers, the beginning of your book likely wasn’t working. Either way, you had some feedback that allowed you to tweak what you needed to for a more effective pitch.
Now, you’re not likely to get as much feedback, which makes it extremely mentally difficult to keep going. You can only query an agent once with the same manuscript unless it’s gone through significant revisions, and even then, some agents don’t want to look at a pitch they’ve seen before. Some agencies have a “no response means no” policy, while others only let you query one agent ever, or one agent at a time, which predictably makes it very hard to tell where you stand when you won’t hear back from them for a year or longer. Also, some agents are only open to queries for certain parts of the year, soit gets really complicated to keep track of who’s open when, which agencies you can pitch to, whether it’s more strategic to wait, etc,. Because if an offer does come in, you only have the queries that are already out to pick from if hypothetically everyone offered.
Also, personally, I think it’s crummy that multiple high-selling agencies only accept queries via referrals or conference attendees, meaning you can only pitch them if you 1) know someone who works with them or 2) have paid several hundred dollars to attend a conference with them. I get it, I do, the market’s so bad right now and they make very little without commission, but also, it feels pretty pay-to-play in a way I don’t love. Often, I considered spending the money on a conference just to get some face time and a query opportunity, but had to stop myself because cold querying is at least free. You could spend yourself into oblivion trying to get an agent’s attention. I think (again, personal opinion) those agencies should at least be open to everyone and just say they 90% prioritize queries from conferences and referrals. I’ve seen more of this than I used to, so I wanted to note!
And part of the reason it takes so long is that when someone nudges an agent with an offer of representation, that agent has 2-3 weeks to drop everything and give that person an answer, meaning that if your manuscript is always #2 on their reading list but they keep getting offer nudges, it could be months before they get to you during their reading time. For fiction, you have the manuscript written and polished beforehand. For nonfiction, you generally submit a proposal and then write the book (after the deal.)
Anyway, here's how I got my agent and how my process went.
I Didn't Tell Anyone Unless I Had to
This is already much longer than a thousand words, but I digress. Anyhow, I wrote my first book in 2015 (it was God-awful and should never see the light of day—no plot, just vibes) then entered college. I had the several ideas that ultimately congealed to form the manuscript I’m now repped for by 2017. I’ll share the timeline and inspiration in another post (because as I write this, I realize exactly how much I have to talk about), but essentially finished a query-able draft of it by late 2020 because I didn’t go all-in on it until after college. I physically couldn’t have. I also just…loved college and that time developed other non-book aspects of my identity.
Many people querying form a querying community. Querying is called “the trenches” for a reason. It’s brutal and long, and most non-queriers just don’t understand how the process can take multiple years and that doesn’t mean it’s failing? It’s such a foreign length of time and such an odd process, but it’s your life dream and thousands of hours on the line. You could get a yes tomorrow, or it could be another year, and it could all change in a heartbeat when you check your email. Needless to say, it feels like exam week for (in my case) 2+ years straight. At a certain point, you may exhaust your list of agents—everyone’s said no or not responded—but at least as an optimist, I thought there would always be a new agent starting out or someone who’s never open to queries who decides to give their inbox a shot. Still, it gets hopeless.
Despite all that, I chose to keep my book secret because…it’s just been a really personal life dream to me for a long time, and I couldn’t be public about it until I was signed. That was just a gut feeling for me personally. The querying community is so supportive and a way to make amazing friendships, but I thought the comparison aspect of it and the need to update others on my progress would be more harmful to me than helpful. My family actually finally had to force the book news out of me because I kept disappearing, so the only way I told people was when I had no other choice. I would have kept it quiet until the very end if not (excepting beta readers.)
I’m also extremely superstitious, so I didn’t want to tell anyone if I had good news in case it didn’t pan out, and didn’t want to tell anyone if I had bad news because my pride hurt and I despaired I’d wasted all this time and energy for nothing.
What My Timeline Looked Like
Fall 2015: the first time I can find the inspiration for MOUNTAIN SOUNDS documented in my notes and screenshots. I also recently found a short story that started out the main arc of my main character, Tatum.
Summer 2017: I started drafting it.
Fall 2018: I technically finished it.
Fall 2020: I rewrote it and it was actually workable.
Jan 2021: I submitted it to 5 (I think) agents and got 2 partials, a rejection, and a revise & resubmit request. I took the R&R as an exclusive.
Feb 2021-Jan 2022: I gave myself a year to completely gut and rewrite the manuscript. Each time, it’s gotten more commercial (I tend to start literary/interior and get more exterior with revision.) I literally completely changed the book, so I count it as writing an entirely different book.
Jan 2022: I submitted it and informed the agent that I’d chosen not to take it as an exclusive.
February 2022-February 2023: I queried.
February 2023: I got my first offer. I chose roughly three weeks as the notification period thanks to workload (do not do this—it was infinitely more brutal than the combined two years of querying.)
February 24, 2023: I signed with my agents.
Did Book Blogging Help?
This might sound dumb, but I used to have quite a few Twitter followers from the book publishing industry. I used to be more memorable in the community (although even then, it wasn’t all that much.) I’d started my book blog in the 7th grade in 2011, met a bunch of publishing pros in 2012 at BookExpo America, and written a blog post about having a passion at a young age that went semi-viral within the community. Then, in 2019, I’d had a really awful constellation of personal circumstances and taken a break from social media during the summer to process. During that time, Twitter deleted my account and I never quite got the book momentum (or any of the followers) back. Which is also why I generally prefer to have most of my content on a platform I have control over.
Since so much right now is based on referrals, it haunted me a bit especially about a year into querying. I knew I’d had agents who followed me then who I could have maybe reached out to. I knew there were editors who’d followed me in 2012. Right now, social media’s so damn helpful in accelerating the process, and querying so slow, that I felt like I’d thrown a lot away because of a dumb mistake (getting offline—which was necessary at the time.) But in rebuilding my Twitter, I could never get that establishment back. You still see it now—once in a blue moon, someone will tweet about a friend looking for an agent, and a bunch of agents will reply that they’d love to take a look. It’s not within the querying process, but a lot goes on behind the scenes or under the surface thanks to friends of friends.
At times, I actually think it could have hurt, because I’m a book reviewer. I’ve read and given thoughts on a lot of books—for better or for worse. While I’m not a mean or snarky reviewer, I am an honest one. While I generally spend most of my energy writing positive reviews, I do write negative reviews on occasion or analyze the effectiveness of craft in books I did not like.
2024 Update: There's been a lot of conversation in the book industry over the past few years with authors claiming you should *never* review books as a writer because other writers are your coworkers. As someone educated in the studio art world—I disagree. And I've been a book blogger for 13+ years, so I think the pervasiveness of this attitude is really wild. I understand the hesitations, but they're more about authors not wanting to offend someone who could potentially blurb or help their own book with any sort of praise that isn't "it was my favorite book ever," which just feels a little fake to me. Be kind, be courteous, but reading is inherently subjective so I think it's totally okay to critique & provide opinions (if that's your wheelhouse) as long as your tone is respectful and you acknowledge your own POV. A conversation for another post.
What if an agent repped one of those books and saw the review on my blog? (I did pitch agents who repped books that I hated, because many of them also repped books that I adored. Tastes are different!) Probably wouldn’t make them feel too warm and fuzzy. I do attempt, with every review, to describe the readers who would love a book that’s not my cup of tea, but I just have a lot of historical thoughts on here.
I often joke I got grandfathered into publishing in the sense that I still run a book blog when many have moved on to Bookstagram or BookTok. Luckily, I still had roughly five referrals that I did use, but I wished I could have been more aggressive about putting myself out there again. Many of the bloggers I used to talk to have stopped. (I’m just stubborn.) A blog’s just not as sexy anymore, but I still love it. I score in the 99th percentile or something for grit, which measures your commitment and "perseverance through challenges" so.
Still though, I did benefit from this (although I’m not sure how it translated within my query.) I’d once interned for a literary agent in college, who I reached out to but who ultimately turned me down. The book was partly inspired by a tweet of his in 2015 seeking a book that felt like a specific song (“Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros), and so I owe him for the core of the book and the short story that started it. Spoiler alert: it’s Brent Taylor, and he’s incredible.
We connected initially because he’d emailed me about that post I’d written when I was 14 about having a passion young and being so, so frustrated about not being able to do much for it yet. He’d said, one day, after college, I’ll be a literary agent and you’ll be an editor and I’ll be pitching you a six-figure book deal over lunch in NYC. Brent—we’re closer to that dream!
I got about five referrals, which is more than what many writers can say. I read 100+ books a year, many of which are YA, which undoubtedly helped my craft. I’d seen macro and micro trends play out over years here, which does help in anticipating what teens will like (IMO.) I miss the glory days of book blogging, but I’m here for the love of it.
Oddly enough, I actually think it was more helpful for me to be on the magazine side of publishing. I noticed that a lot of editors and writers for magazines got represented and sold more easily (tapping into an existing platform?) so that’s partly why I intensified my writing in that terrain. I didn’t start adding my bylines into my query bio until late in the process, and I’m not sure if my requests then were due to my letter being better or because I could say “I’ve been published in X.” On a personal level, getting into magazine journalism also helped me to build a thicker skin for rejection, more strategically think through pitches, and to have some empathy for the deluge of email queries in an agent’s inbox—my own is a nightmare. Still, it’d be naïve not to say that that was probably a positive in my bio that could have pushed people in my direction—and actively helps others in the same boat.
Okay, so the literal querying process went like this.
Querying for me was Schrödinger’s Cat, so I actually only sent out a few queries at a time. I was a slooooow querier. The thought of running through my list and having nobody else to send it to made me infinitely nervous, but I probably could have ripped off the Band-Aid right away and just known. Part of why I ultimately got my offer in Feb 2023 is because I sent out a bunch of queries at once, telling myself that it’d been a year and I needed this to be over. But also so much of it is timing and luck, which I overthink to death (and actually screwed me over a couple of times) because what if I’d picked the wrong time to send it?
Anyhow, here’s a brain dump:
- While any “How I Got My Agent” posts are undoubtedly helpful, treat any written during/before Summer 2021 with a grain of salt. It’s just a different climate now. Advice is super lovely and the emotion in those posts echoes the same sentiments, but right now is just different in terms of strategy.
- It’s also not helpful to compare timing because you’ll feel like death seeing someone who got an agent in three weeks but also think your experience was just as painful as someone who spent two years in the trenches, and you’ll truly just never know what anyone else’s process was (or even how good their writing is.) Luck and timing.
- Writing an effective query letter and writing an effective book are two different skills so, again, you can’t really judge stats for better or for worse because it’s allll about the execution.
- On that note, strategy only helps to a certain extent which will make planning types (me) feel like you have zero control over anything. It’s a lot of despair.
- I personally was a very slow and careful querier, but I think I could have spared myself a lot of heartache if I hadn’t been so afraid to send out letters.
- Conferences are always a maybe I should have for me, but they’re extremely expensive so I don’t think they should be required in order to query certain agencies. There were agencies I would have loved to have pitched but they were referral only! I get it (emails get inundated), but it’s still frustrating to see and definitely makes it easier for authors of means to get ahead. Hindsight bias for sure, but you could pour thousands of dollars into trying to get an agent and never go anywhere, or pour money into a conference and get an agent right away, or get an agent for free by querying. You see a lot of clients get mysteriously signed by agents who have DO NOT QUERY or NOT ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS signs up, and wonder what secret invitation they got. Who did they know? What did they attend? Should I have tried? Also, another reason not to care too much about stats—there are a few posts from writers I know got their agents through paid opportunities that include query stats but don’t mention conference attendance and critiques. And on that note, writers who attend conferences and have the means obviously have the talent to pick up an agent, but a lot of this industry is just based on luck. It just helps on the timing/luck front, which makes me worry about the ramifications of this practice becoming more common and excluding certain voices further (and, of course, I am transparently very jealous of those who got to query hard-to-reach agencies.)
- I preferred not to tell anyone I was doing this, despite it occupying 90% of my brain at a given point. I was superstitious, and it’s what I needed to do in order to get through it, which I don’t regret (although tapping into the querying community would have been lovely.)
- MOUNTAIN SOUNDS was my last thought before going to bed each night and my first thought when I got up in the morning. I sacrificed so much to see this through. I cannot express to you how much I gave up to do this. I’m absolutely, one hundred percent obsessed with my book and (now that it’s public) cannot shut up about it. This is five years of repressed information coming out!
- Being a long game person helps, but it’s also (excuse my language) really fucking shitty.
Getting My Offer
Like I said, I got really frustrated at the beginning of February and sent out a bunch of queries all at once. I was sick of doing this for so long, sick to my stomach that it wouldn’t pay off, absolutely emotionally and physically exhausted from balancing all this with my actual 9-5 and freelance workload. I probably sent out 15 at once, which is a ton for me! I genuinely wish more people talked about how mentally awful that notification period is, because for me, that was the worst part of querying. It was a lot of emotion, a lot of adrenaline, a lot of repressed emotion, rejection, and uncertainty all at once.
My First Offer
My first full request (excepting my R&R) came in January 2022. I did not hear back from a single one of those until February 2023, which is absolutely wild. I could have nudged, but like I said, I was afraid of fucking up the timing and pushing someone to a no accidentally because I’d reminded them of a project they would have eventually gotten to otherwise. That full had been out for about three days. We set up the call. I sent out a bunch of queries.
IT DID NOT FEEL REAL
I was definitely in a state of shock. When you spend years preparing for a single event and it finally happens (by surprise even!): ????? My brain absolutely disappeared. I’d slept for a full day after submitting MOUNTAIN SOUNDS for the first time, then I slept for about a full day after receiving my offer. Schrödinger’s Cat was over.
Now, it was all a matter of who I’d sign with. Which meant I was suddenly about to get a lot of answers.
NOTIFYING EVERYONE
I started to overthink the timing of everything. Had I queried everyone I wanted to? Should I have queried more? What if I’d pushed them at a bad time and everyone said no because it happened to be a bad week for that? According to Twitter, a lot of people were getting offer notifications at once, which meant a lot of triaging. I wished I’d picked a dead week for this to happen.
I GOT A LOT OF FULLS
I’m glad I sent out a huge batch right at the end because then, when I followed up with an offer notification, I got a ton of fulls that I don’t think I would have gotten if I’d not seemed in demand. (Wow—she got an offer so quickly! Reader, it was not quick.) Demand and buzz absolutely feeds this industry, so you have to go a lot by momentum. I told my family and immediately was like please do not acknowledge me for the next three weeks or ask me about absolutely anything because I do not want to talk about it but also be gentle with me also because I’m in pain.
I also crashed—hard
Part of running on adrenaline for three straight years (I have no idea how I found the time and energy to pour my entire being into a book and I am exhausted) means that when the adrenaline stops, you get really low. I have not been that low-energy or sad in a while.
2024 Update: The adrenaline continues! I queried again after this, and it was the exact same mood swing. And then similarly, I get a ton of adrenaline while revising then crash after. See: Sisyphus.
I’d just thrown everything I had at something, and now I was getting answers. I was so tired, but I work hourly and I’m freelance, and so I don’t get PTO and I’m always vaguely worried that I won’t get work again. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid, which means I rarely ever take time off (something I’m working on.)
Everything I’d given up also popped up again. Had it been worth it? Had I screwed myself over? This had all been so lonely. My sister tried to tell me she understood how I felt and I (regrettably) snapped at her because if you have not been querying, you don’t. It is <0.01% odds over three years and thousands of hours, and while there are analogous situations for empathy, it is just extremely impossible for anyone who has not been in that situation to get it. This book was everything I’d wanted for my entire life. But: I had an offer. So why wasn’t I happier?
The mood swings were intense and likely stupid. I did my work like a little robot, and tried not to think, and did not sleep for three straight weeks. On that note, I do not recommend taking three weeks. If an agent wants the book enough, they will find the time, and all you’re doing is torturing yourself with the what ifs. It was also bad timing because I had other personal situations going on and had to be there for other people and my brain could not handle everything at once.
2024 Update: During my second time querying, I made the same mistake. Don't give them a long window. You will hurt the entire time, and the right people will prioritize it.
I want MOUNTAIN SOUNDS to sell (and easily), but getting an agent felt like the obstacle that carried more emotional weight and influence over my self-esteem (although it’s not a meritocracy, so that’s not a helpful thing to ascribe meaning to. Can’t help it. Brains are irrational.) Now that I have an agent, I feel secure in the work and its place in my life—no matter what that takes from me next.
A lot of people didn't get back to me, which made closure tricky.
I had 29 fulls out. 29. In this era, that’s a pretty high number. Out of them, I had multiple people just never respond. And these weren’t only agents who had requested over a year ago and then gotten buried in work. Most of these were agents who had requested the full knowing my deadline and then just not responded (although I’ll give a pass to one of them. I’d queried her post-offer because a publishing friend told me I should anyway, knowing she likely wouldn’t be able to answer in time.) Later, I ended up getting more fulls after I’d already committed to my agents, which just felt a little icky.
Ghosting really threw me for a loop because ghosting fulls
in the decision period isn’t something I’d heard about. Ghosted fulls, sure. An unfortunate reality of post-2020. But you’re supposed to have your decisions in from everyone who promised to read in time in order to make your decision. A rejection would have been nice. I was just surprised by people who’d expressed enthusiasm to read, promised to get back to me by my deadline, and then just never responded.
Because of this, I had a hard time picking my end date. Should I extend a few days and nudge those agents? Or assume that because they didn’t respond, it was a no? It all just felt a bit unfair because we do so much to accommodate agents and this is one of the few times we authors have the power to set a boundary or deadline. (Agents, I adore you. But you’re holding most of the power.)
I don’t hold a grudge or anything against any of the agents who didn’t respond, but it still really sucked because I felt like I didn’t have all the information I was promised. Silence is a no, but I’d thought this was finally when I’d get all my answers. Did they ever read it? Or did they read and not love?
The Close Calls Messed with Me Most
You get a lot of rejections during that period (at least, most of the time.) Despite having agents who were psyched about my work, I also had a tough time grappling with the deeply positive responses. Something about throwing 10000% into your work and then being told you were 5% off (or that they just didn’t have the bandwidth) really messes with your head much more so than a negative response would.
Like, I almost wished these agents had told me they didn’t like or connect with the book but instead I got one agent say she was already regretting passing and would be kicking herself down the road, and another say she couldn’t put it down and was incredibly jealous of who got to work with me. If you’re jealous or would be kicking yourself, why…not…offer…? It was timing and luck, but I’d already waited three years. And those rejections felt so much worse, because although I’d beaten the odds, and done the thing, and had agents I couldn’t wait to sign with, they made me feel like I’d failed at something integral. I hadn’t gotten that last 5%. At the end of the day though, a no is a no. I had offers I wanted, and that’s what mattered.
AND THEN I SIGNED.
Don’t believe me about luck and timing? Here goes. I ended my querying process after two years in the trenches (counting my revision) with five offers, and ended up signing with an agent who’d turned me down a year before—while the beginning of the book had barely changed.
2024 Update: Since writing this post in spring, I left the literary agency I signed with and re-queried MOUNTAIN SOUNDS until February 2024, at which point I signed with William Morris Endeavor. The second process was different in some ways (and had an equally long reflection, because it was also hell), but I am very happy to have landed where I did. It's been a slammed couple of years!
When I asked on the call what had grabbed them or when they knew they’d offer, they said they’d known from the voice practically immediately. But it was especially interesting to me because the beginning—the part [redacted] had read—hadn’t changed substantially at all, which is why I’d asked. Luck and timing, y’all. Awful when it doesn’t work, but encouraging when it does!
My Best Advice I Can Give
Querying just looks different for everyone, despite us all hoping for one secret clue that will get it to be over. My favorite thing I did while querying was to buy a little case of those mini one-glass prosecco bottles from the grocery store and pop one for every big querying moment to remind myself of the momentum.
Sent out a scary query? Champagne.
Got a partial? Champagne.
Got a full? Champagne.
Got a rejection from said scary query? It’s one less uncertainty. Champagne.
They’re little, but still celebratory, and I’d just need a couple sips to feel like I was doing a ritual. And they didn’t feel like they’d take away from that big, I-just-got-an-agent-feeling when I ultimately signed.
Throughout it all, I knew I was stubborn enough that it was a when, not an if, even if it took me way longer and was a secret weighing me down. Chip on my shoulder—gone.
I also try to remember what a win it was to get fulls from agents who never requested. A few of mine hadn’t requested new material or responded to a query in a year or two, so when they did to mine, I was truly one in thousands—no matter what the end result might be. I also tried to remember how massive it felt that these agents represented my favorite authors, like that fangirl feeling of “someone who’s read X’s work is also reading mine” right now.
And this ritual, whatever it is, doesn’t have to be champagne, but as a psych geek, I think it’s immensely helpful to have something querying specific you do whenever you get news, that you don’t use for any other area of your life. On that note, I owe myself a bottle of Veuve.
What's Next?
2024 Update: This is obviously out of date, but you can follow the journey by reading all my summary posts.
I was working full-time as I wrote (and revised, and queried) the manuscript, but I need to be a little kinder to myself this time around. This is such a massive ordeal that I’m a bit scared about how much work I have ahead of me. It’s what I signed up for, and it’s a privilege to do, so I’ll get through it! Because of that, I’ve also asked several of my freelance contracts if I can scale down for April—which means I’ll be earning less, a calculated risk—with a goal of giving myself at least one workday a week I can devote entirely to my book and my next one. This will likely be temporary because I do need to earn, but part of why I wanted an agent is so that I could feel justified taking time off to write, or setting my Slack to DND during my off hours (limits, y’all), or similar.
While I have other book ideas, I didn’t write any until signing for this one. I have so much respect for people in the trenches who say that the way to keep your head on straight is to write your next, but frankly, it takes so much time and (lost) money and sacrifice that I mentally couldn’t until I’d made strides with this one. Now that I’m signed, I feel like I’ll always be able to write my next without worrying it’s a waste because I have the potential of selling it without jumping through querying hoops for an incalculable amount of time. (It will always improve your craft, but it does require a lot of sacrifice.) I’m an author, but I’m also other things, and I’ve already given up so much of my twenties for this. I’ve outlined my next and know what’s coming up, so my brain can simmer through that while working on this revision, and I’ll probably tackle it in April as part of Camp NaNoWriMo just to get words on paper.
I can’t talk about going on submission or selling it yet, but I am excited to finally feel like I can dive into a writing community. Querying was secret for me just because of what I needed then, but submission will be entirely different because I want to connect with others going through it and can celebrate the successes (and mourn the drawbacks) as they come.
Also, oh God—I have to care about social media again. Numbers do help when you’re pitching, so if you’d like to see MOUNTAIN SOUNDS on shelves, share my profile (and the blog, and all that jazz!) with friends, families, and your own networks. Self-promotion makes me cringe, and feels embarrassing, but I’m an author now—it comes with the territory.
Keep Up with My Author Life
- Follow me on Instagram. It’s still my favorite social media. I oscillate between wading into TikTok or not. (I don’t want to…film my face or my voice.) Also Twitter—semi-used, but perhaps will be more intentional about it again.
- Sign up for my newsletter—I’m going to be sharing my book info, querying strategy, craft resources, and more here, so it’s your best bet for getting “how to write/publish a book” and “what is Mountain Sounds” type information. I’ll be documenting my revision as I do it too!
- See the mood video
- Listen to the playlist
- Tell me what you want to see and hear about!
And thank you all, whether you’ve been a follower of the blog or are new to me, for getting me here. Words Like Silver turns 12 years old on April 15, 2022, and I have so much to celebrate.
