My Querying Journey and How I Finally Landed an Agent
On Friday, February 11, I announced on my Instagram that I signed with a literary agent. The outpouring of love and congratulations was heartwarming. Although this is only the first step towards publication, it’s a vital step that took me years — and I mean years — to reach. I asked in the caption whether people wanted to read my querying journey and I got a resounding yes. So today I’m breaking away from my usual topics and giving you my journey toward landing a literary agent.
What is querying?
For those not familiar with traditional publishing, a query is a letter you send to an agent. Your goal is to entice them to read your material and then hopefully offer to represent you. You know how actors and musicians have managers? Agents play a similar role in the literary world. They help the author's career by finding them the best publishing deal to bring their story to the world.
An agent acts as a lawyer, a guide, and a friend. But finding one can take years because agents get thousands of queries a year. I’ve been on webinars where agents say they get hundreds of queries in a single day. And it can take a while for them to sort through them all because they have their current clients to take care of first.
That’s why you’ll see on many agent websites that response times could be anywhere from two weeks to six months. If you’re an impatient person, querying will not be easy.
The difference between fiction and nonfiction querying
Now there is a difference when it comes to querying fiction versus nonfiction. Fiction includes categories like contemporary, historical, romance, mystery, etc. Agents and publishers want to see a complete manuscript (60,000-90,000+ words) because they want to make sure you can tell a compelling story. Your beginning may start off strong, but if you’re ending fizzles out, they won’t take you on.
Because of this, the need for freelance editors and proofreaders has risen. Fiction writers can now pay to get their manuscripts as clean and polished as possible before submitting them to agents. For those going the self-publishing route, an agent isn’t necessary, but a clean and polished manuscript is.
For nonfiction — the category I write in — the querying process is a little different. You sell the book on a proposal. A book proposal is a 50+ page document that gives the agent an overview of what the book is about, who it’s for, why it’s important, and why the author is the only person who can write it. A couple of sample chapters are also included.
It’s essentially a business proposal for your book. Agents choose to represent you based on the proposal and will then shop that proposal to publishers.
In basic terms, fiction is written before you sell while nonfiction is written after you sell to a publisher. Why? Because certain nonfiction might require money from the advance to write the book. If you want to write a travel guide, you need to travel to that area for research. You could use money from your advance to do that.
Or if you have to interview a ton of people, you need time to set up those interviews. With nonfiction, the publisher will give you a deadline, and you have until then to turn in the first draft.
My querying process
I started my querying journey when I was 21. As cliche as it sounds, I always knew I wanted to write. I wanted to be a published author. I wanted to share my stories with the world. Those stories were primarily fiction. I had submitted several fiction manuscripts to agents over the years and while I got a few who read the full thing, none were confident enough to represent me.
Those were hard blows — any rejection is — but I kept going. I knew my time would come.
But then from 2016 to 2020, I fell into the worst low point of my life. I barely wrote. I felt worthless. Like nothing I did mattered. I don’t like dwelling too long on that time because I’m not proud of some of the thoughts I had. While I had a few good days throughout those four years, they were few and far in between.
I knew I was the only one who would be able to get myself out of that funk. So I challenged myself to start a one-page a day journaling practice. It didn’t matter what I wrote, so long as I wrote in my journal on one page a day. Does this sound familiar? Well, this practice not only guided me out of my funk, but it showed me a whole new path.
I took a copywriting class, started a side business, and started my simple living/minimalism journey. I discovered I was asexual and rediscovered my love of blogging and telling true, personal stories. While I still love fiction and have many ideas, nonfiction became my passion and to this day remains so.
If this journaling practice helped me this much, there had to be people out there also seeking a simple, yet beneficial journaling habit. That became the basis for my latest book proposal: One Page a Day. I signed up for classes about book proposal writing, purchased books about it, and joined a writing community of women writers who were just as excited about this project as me.
Here is the exact timeline of my querying process with this project:
June 11, 2021 = Purchased Book Pop Workshop by Jess Ekstrom after taking her free webinar.
June 2021 through December 2021 = drafted and edited my book proposal several times.
September 2021 = Joined Quill & Cup and received amazing feedback from my hedgie sisters.
October 2021 = Purchased Courtney Maum’s Domestika course Book Proposal Writing: How to Get Published.
December 2021 = Researched agents and compiled a list of 50 to submit to.
January 18, 2022 = Sent my first batch of queries out.
January 19, 2022 = Heard from an agent who wanted to chat.
January 20, 2022 = Talked with an agent who offered representation. That same day I sent emails to the agents who currently had the query and let them know I was offered representation. I gave them two weeks to see if any wanted to talk.
January 25, 2022 = Another agent responded with interest.
January 27, 2022 = Talked with the second agent who also offered representation.
February 7, 2022 = Made my decision and let both agents know.
February 9, 2022 = Signed agency agreement.
Now, let me be frank: this is a particularly fast timeline. Just because nonfiction proposals are shorter than fiction manuscripts, doesn’t mean we wait any less. They also take just as much energy and time to write. But some agents do respond a lot faster and in this particular case, one did.
The hardest part was making the decision between these two agents. Both had great track records and after reaching out to current clients, I got great feedback. That means the decision was left to my gut. The agent I went with understood my mission with the book more. She offered some great publications to submit to and even some extra ways we could get the book into stores other than a bookshop.
We’re still a ways from publication. The next steps are tightening my proposal and then she’ll shop it around. Then it’s another waiting game. Yes, publishing a book — in the traditional sense — is a lot of waiting.
What I wanted to share specifically with this post is that I did the work necessary to make my proposal the strongest it could possibly be. I urge you to do the same. Doesn’t matter if you write fiction or nonfiction. Join a writing group — online or in-person. Get feedback. Take classes and webinars.
So many agents and authors are offering free workshops and it’s important to jump on those opportunities when they come up. Carly Watters has excellent webinars, many of which I took and highly endorse.
Every author has a different querying story. You’ll find that some writers found their agents quickly and with their first book. Others didn’t land an agent until their fifth book. No matter what you read, remember that no two querying journeys are the same. The most important thing is to not give up. Look at me. I’ve been querying since I was 21 and I finally landed my agent at 34.
The best advice I can give you is this: do your research. Follow the guidelines. Be patient. And don’t take rejection personally. Writers are rejected every day. By agents, publishers, and themselves. Below I’ve listed my favorite resources for querying. If you have any other questions, please comment below, and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Resources for finding agents:
