This month, I have started to query for a literary agent to publish my next book. It is an odious process which is qualitatively worse than submitting manuscripts for publication. Most “markets” that you submit a manuscript to at least pretend that they will respond to let you know if they’re going to reject your manuscript. But agents — universally as far as I can tell — say that you can expect your query to vanish into a black hole, and that if you haven’t heard from them in two or three months, you should assume that you never will.
Don’t call us, we’ll call you. —All Literary Agents
Last fall, at WriteAngles, I attended a panel of agents that talked about their role in the publishing process. Agents are fundamentally a kind of parasite that act as gatekeepers for the publishing industry. Basically none of the traditional publishers accept unsolicited manuscripts, so you need an agent to even have your work considered. Agents see themselves as indispensable, of course. The agents on the panel suggested that you should query for at least six months before considering alternate routes to publication (i.e. small press or self publishing). Since I’ve already done those routes, I thought I would investigate finding an agent this time around. To find an agent, you need to engage in this activity called “querying”.
Querying requires a vast amount of research. I’ve attended several workshops to learn about the process. To begin, you need to draft a query letter, identify “comp titles,” and provide a preview of your manuscript. Of course, there’s no consensus about what any of these things represent, so you also have to study the submission guidelines for each agency. Some agencies also require other things (like a logline). Others put varying and unspecified arbitrary constraints (length of query letter, length of preview, etc).
One Straw Dog Writers Guild workshop I attended, provided a very nice overview of the query letter. A few takeaways: Address agent by name and be sure to not misgender. Indicate your reason for querying this agent: have you met before? Do you have something in common? Introduce your title. Identify the genre and wordcount. Craft a three paragraph pitch: The protagonist, the obstacle, and the stakes. Identify recent comp titles. Provide a short bio that focuses on your writing accomplishments. Finally, wrap up with a closing. Of course, as I said, some agencies want something different, so you still have to check the submission guidelines.
Perhaps the most difficult challenge for me was to identify “comp titles.” These are books with similar themes that have sold in the past few years. Before the workshop I had tried looking various places (e.g. Amazon and Goodreads) with little luck identifying good choices. But the workshop introduced me to NoveList a search engine that lets you search for recent books and find related titles. Luckily, my local library provides free access for library card holders. Using that, I was able to identify some recent books with similar themes.
Once I had the pieces mostly in hand, I started the most difficult part: trying to identify agents that my book might appeal to. There is a nagware website, querytracker, that many agents use for query submissions. The “free” version is intentionally crippled in a bunch of ways so that they can try to get you to pay for a higher tier. The website purports to have information about agents, but I’ve found that it has basically nothing and, what it has, is out of date. But it does have a bunch of agent listings so it’s not a bad place to start. Starting there, I investigate the literary agency’s website and study the page about the agent there to learn what kinds of things they are looking for. After exhausting querytracker, I will start studying Locus, which lists which agents sold speculative fiction books each month. That may well be more a profitable course of action, but querytracker — though not very useful — is easy and seems like a good place to start to practice, as I polish my letter and my pitch.
Lady Cecelia’s Journey is a sapphic, romantasy, road story. It is written as a series of six novelettes (that can serve as chapters in a collected edition) that, including a seventh “omake” story, totals 74,000 words. It is set in the same universe as my debut novel Revin’s Heart, but at an earlier point in time. That said, this is is a fully independent story.
Lady Cecelia is an aristocratic young woman attending the Westland Finishing School in a conservative part of the island of Belleriand. She has begun to realize she has feelings for women, but grew up in a sheltered environment with no opportunity to explore her sexual orientation. Her wealthy parents, who unbeknownst to her are the leaders of an organized crime syndicate, intend to place her in an arranged marriage to benefit the family politically.
Cecelia falls in love with Kasseh, a commoner who is attending the finishing school due to the patronage of the Baron. After they are are expelled for “conduct unbecoming a lady,” they flee together toward the capital, where — with the Baron’s support — they hope to be able to live together openly. Her mother takes a dim view of her rebellion against her authority and aggressively pursues her.
I’m aiming to send out at least one query per day. Recently someone at SFWA said they had submitted 150 queries before finding an agent. So that at least gives me some ball park figure to think about as I pursue this path. It’s a journey of my own that I’m undertaking one query at a time.
Oh. And if you’re an agent, I was kidding about the whole “parasite” thing. Really. Ha-ha-ha.