A querying update—

As promised, here’s an update on my querying progress:

A lot of agents are closed to queries.

Queries—if you don’t know—take a long time. Even if you have everything prepared. When I send a query letter, I usually have to go through about four to five different agent profiles because many are closed. Then I see if we’re a good fit, personalize the query to the agent’s manuscript wish list, answer all the agent’s questions (if any), etc. One query can take up to an hour.

I haven’t sent out as many queries as I would like. I’ve been trying to catch up on my goal of two queries a week, but I’ve had a heavy workload lately.

So far it’s:

• Queries sent: 27
• Queries rejected: 17
• Queries pending: 10

I have gotten a decent amount of responses. I’ve had quite a few fast responders too. (Some agents can take over a year, so faster responses do help.) A couple rejected me within twenty-four hours. Which some writers like, but it makes me think they didn’t consider me well.

For at least one of those rejected, I was in the maybe pile. That means that my novel was appealing to them, but they decided to not request the full book for an unknown reason. (Form rejection.)

The most frustrating part is the lack of feedback.

The silence hurts because you don’t know if you’re just not a good fit in the agent’s eyes or if someone’s wrong with your query, synopsis, or opening pages. And if you change something with no feedback, you might be changing what’s working for you, making your chances worse. You’re gambling every time instead of improving your writing through direct feedback. Which hurts both the agents’ and the writers’ time.

So, it’s been a lot of downs so far. Querying is only getting worse from what I’ve heard from others who have been querying for years.

It is nicknamed the query trenches for a reason.