Query Strategy: Target or Blast?

There's no one so worried about etiquette and detail as a querying writer. I've talked about the personalization debate here on the blog before, but today's topic is a little different: should you only send queries to agents who say they want the genre, themes, and/or tone of your novel ("dark epic fantasy," for example), or should you cast a wider net—anyone who says they want YA at all?

Searching the internet yields varying responses. Janet Reid, for one, is a big fan of querying widely. Victoria Strauss, on the other hand, suggests targeting your queries as closely as possible, picking only agents whose interests and specialties appear to be a good fit for your manuscript.

The truth is, we're spoiled. There are very few other creative fields where industry professionals publicly state their preferences and wishlists. I've had more than one discussion about this with my husband, who spent years querying managers and agents for screenplays and would have KILLED for the kind of information that's freely available for fiction on agency websites, MSWL, and more.

While it's important to keep this information in mind, one lesson I've learned is that agents often won't know they're interested in something until they see it. I've been around the contest circuit enough to be surprised over and over again at who requests my pitches. It's often someone I would never have thought to query based on their wishlists.

My ultimate take on the target vs. blast question? Query widely. Use agent wishlists and agency guidelines to find people you definitely won't query (if they say, "I don't like sci-fi," or "adult fiction only," stay the heck away from them with your YA space opera), but everyone else is fair game. You never know who might fall in love with your work.

Queries: To Personalize, or Not to Personalize?

I started the query process again this week (after a few months off buried in intensive revisions, thanks to being selected for Brenda Drake's Pitch Wars contest!). As always, I was torn on whether to personalize my queries or just jump right into the manuscript pitch. If you search for advice on the subject, you'll find conflicting opinions. What to do?

One of the biggest proponents of skipping the personalization and getting right to the point is the Query Shark herself, Ms. Janet Reid. She likens querying to calling around to find a plumber—would you tell them all the reasons you're calling them, rather than someone else?

You might also find people making the argument that agents get hundreds (some even thousands) of queries a week. To have the best chance of hooking them, don't you want to lead with your best material? Hopefully, that's your manuscript pitch, not reminding them what their own website or Twitter posts say they want.

On the flip side, querying can be very impersonal. Agents hate it when authors address queries to "Dear Agent" instead of using their name like a person. So maybe it makes sense to humanize yourself right off the bat by proving that you chose them for a reason. In addition, adding reasons why you're querying that agent with that particular project—as long as your reasons are good ones—shows you have some knowledge of the publishing industry and your genre and themes, or similarities between your novel and others. Former agent and author Nathan Bransford admits that he used personalization as a way to flag queries that deserved a closer look.

In the end, I decided to personalize my queries going forward—but only when I have something that legitimately makes me think that agent is a good fit for my manuscript. If the agent doesn't have much online about their tastes, clients, or wishlist, I won't try to make something up. It's easy to tell when people are reaching—and a clumsy personalization seems like it would be worse than none at all.

Do you personalize your queries?

Writer's Resource: QueryTracker's Query Timeline

I wax rhapsodic about QueryTracker.net every so often, and it's time for another installment. I'm just starting a round of queries, so I'm visiting often to mark the agents I've found who might be good fits for my manuscript. There's a new feature for QueryTracker Premium subscribers that I'm finding really useful, so I thought I'd highlight it here!

At a glance, the query timeline tells you where an agent is in their query queue, as well as other information like how much they're requesting or rejecting and the length of time between the submission and the response. Although not everyone marks their queries in QueryTracker (obviously), it still provides a good snapshot of what you can expect.

Here's an example of an agent who has been extremely timely about replying to queries in the past 30 days. The red frowny faces are rejections, but the short length of the line indicates that at least they're quick rejections:

And here's someone who I wouldn't expect to hear from for a while:

This timeline, on the other hand, shows me at a glance that this agent is a quick responder and is actively requesting material (the smiley green faces). She's moving up in my queue!

While some might feel that this level of detail is a little too obsessive, I find that it actually helps me stop obsessing. Instead of wondering why I haven't heard back from someone who seemed to be such a good fit for my manuscript, I can see at a glance that the agent is a month behind on queries and stop worrying about it.

The query timeline is a feature only available to Premium members, but like I've said before, QT Premium membership is inexpensive—only $25 a year—and totally worth it for querying writers. You can find out about the rest of the Premium features here. No affiliation, just a happy customer!

Writer's Resource: QueryTracker Premium

QueryTracker.net is one of the best web resources available to querying writers. The basic membership (free!) allows a user to search their extensive agent database by dozens of criteria, make a list of agents to query with private notes, and keep track of responses and material submissions.


But if that's not enough for you, I highly recommend checking out QueryTracker's paid upgrade option, QueryTracker Premium. For a seriously cheap $25 a year, members get the following benefits:

• The ability to track queries for multiple projects.
• A whole bunch of premium reports, like a list of which agents are the fastest responders or the ones queriers have marked as most helpful in their responses.
• Ability to add a private listing for agents who aren't in the QT database (rare, but it happens).
• Access to raw data about each agent's activity gathered from QT users. This one is AWESOME. You can see a list of the QT users who've queried each agent, which date they queried, when and if they've gotten a response, and what that response was. I've been using this feature a lot recently!

And in researching this post, I came across several other features of QueryTracker Premium I didn't even know about. Color me surprised! I'll be checking these out immediately:

• Access to "Similar Tastes" reports--this apparently will allow me to select an agent who requested my manuscript and then get a list of agents who tend to request the same material as that one. Sounds like I might find a few more to add to my query list this way.
• The ability to receive emails when a new agent or publisher is added to the database.

I have no professional affiliation with QueryTracker--but you can count me as a satisfied user!

Writing a Short Pitch

I'm currently in the middle of querying my third novel, and this time I'm doing it right--sending out queries in small batches, waiting for responses, and tweaking my query and pages based on the feedback I receive. But as I'm sure Tom Petty would agree, the waiting is the hardest part.

One of the things that helps pass the time is entering writing contests. These are a recent discovery of mine. Fabulous people in the online writing community generously donate their time to run contests on their websites, blogs, or even Twitter.

I've participated in four contests over the past month and have gotten several requests from agents to see partial or full manuscripts, which is super-exciting (and helps ease the pain of waiting for query responses!).

A lot of my waiting time has been taken up with putting together pitches that fit the guidelines of each contest. I thought it might be fun to take a look at a few of them.

My comments on each pitch are in blue.

First, for comparative purposes, here's my long pitch (the one that goes in my query letter).

Long Pitch:

Remy Bardin’s parents invented a drug that extends human life by two hundred years—as long as you can pay the Company for those daily pills. Society has fragmented into the long-timers who live in constant fear of losing everything, and the short-timers who would do anything for a few extra years.

Remy isn’t worried—he’ll have a guaranteed supply of the drug when he comes of age next year. But his perfect life dissolves when an old man who threatens to expose his father’s secrets winds up dead. Remy can’t help but wonder what his parents had to do with the old man’s death, and what secrets they could be trying to protect.

After breaking into their lab in the heavily-guarded Company stronghold, he finds out things that make him question the morality of his existence… and he must decide if a few hundred years can possibly be worth the price.

I've gotten a decent request rate on my queries, so I know this pitch isn't too bad, but way too long for most pitch contests.

Three Sentence Pitch:

Remy Bardin's parents invented a drug that extends human life by two hundred years, which is why society has fragmented into the long-timers who can afford the pills and the short-timers who would do anything for a few extra years.

Seventeen-year-old Remy's got a guaranteed lifetime supply of the drug, but his perfect world falls apart when an old man threatens to expose his father's secrets and then is murdered.

After breaking into his parents' lab, Remy finds out the horrible truth behind the drug... and he must decide if a few hundred years can possibly be worth the price.

I took out a few details from the first paragraph and combined two sentences into one. Not too bad.
The second paragraph was harder--I spent a good long while trying to figure out how to get all the details into one sentence. I had to cut the part about Remy wondering what secrets his parents are keeping, but I felt like it was at least implied by the shorter sentence.


The last paragraph was technically only one sentence already, but I felt like it was a bit long for a short pitch contest, so I tightened it up.
I must have done something right, because this pitch won me a blog contest and a full manuscript request from an awesome agent at a top agency!

One Sentence Pitch:

When a privileged teenage boy learns the horrific truth behind a miracle drug that prolongs the life of the rich, he must try to bring down the all-powerful Company from the inside.

Here's where it starts to get reeeallly tricky. Distilling the whole plot of a book down into a few paragraphs is hard enough--but when we're talking one sentence, it seems impossible.

What worked for me was to really think about the core of the story--what did I say when someone asked me what my novel was about? I wrote a line or two off the top of my head to answer that question.

Then I started looking at the individual words. In a pitch this short, every word counts. At first, it said "a spoiled teenage boy", but then I thought about the exact concept I wanted to get across and changed it to "privileged"--which really is a better representation of the character's background (and bonus: a less generic word).

Twitter Pitch:

A teenage boy learns the horrific secret behind a life-extending drug and must try to bring down his parents' company from the inside.

And you thought the last one was bad... this pitch, for a Twitter contest, had to be no more than 135 characters long (Twitter allows 140 characters, but 5 were needed for the contest's hashtag-identifier).

I started with my one sentence pitch and started cutting. But even after I got rid of all the extra words, I still had too many characters. Then it was time to look at shorter ways to say the same thing. "A miracle drug that prolongs the life of the rich" became "a life-extending drug". "The all-powerful Company" became "his parents' company", because I saved 4 characters!

This pitch also got me a request for material. Despite its length, I think I spent just as long on it as any of the others.

Have you had to work up short pitches for your manuscripts? Do you find them easy or difficult?