Everything You Need to Begin Querying Your Novel

The time has come.

You’ve spent countless hours writing and polishing your manuscript until it’s the best it can be. You’re ready for the next step, to begin the frightening foray into what writing veterans call “the querying trenches”.

Maybe you already have an idea of what this next step is, maybe you are already prepared. Maybe you just finished fixing your book and haven’t really thought about publishing or what publishing route you want to pursue. If you haven’t, consider checking out my previous post on publishing types! That post has extensive explanations of the different publishing methods with lists of pros and cons to help you decide which method is best for you and your story.

Assuming you’ve decided to pursue traditional publishing (or at least try it out), this post is all about what you need to know for querying. Basically, querying for dummies.

Because lists are helpful, here is a list of what you need to start querying. Below, I’ll go more in-depth with each of these things.

• edited, polished manuscript
• solid, concise synopsis
• clear, well-written query letter
• 3-5 pitches
• OPTIONAL: separate email (so query updates are set for viewing when you’re emotionally ready to handle them)
• OPTIONAL: queries spreadsheet to track updates, when to nudge, and any feedback

Let’s break it down!

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Edited, Polished Manuscript

It should be a given that the manuscript you’re querying will not be the version that gets published. If you sign with an agent and later a publishing house, your book will go through more rounds of edits in preparation for professional publishing. That said, that does not give excuses for querying a shoddy book. The traditional querying trenches are INSANELY competitive, and the competition has only grown worse in recent years, especially since 2020 resulted in many people writing books. Agents get hundreds to thousands of queries a week, depending on the agent, and it’s not humanly possible to go through them all. We’ll discuss the query letter and synopsis later, but having a polished manuscript can only help your cause. The more professional your query package looks, the higher your chances of signing with an agent sooner rather than later. Not to mention, the more ready your book is, the less work you’ll have to put into it between signing with an agent and going on sub to publishing houses as well.

The easiest and cheapest way to prepare your book for querying is to have various alpha or beta readers (and/or critique partners) read through your book and give feedback. For more info on these types of readers and what they do, check out this post. For more info on how to evaluate their feedback, check out this post!

Some authors also consider it worthwhile to hire an editor or two to go through their manuscript. This is typically only developmental or occasionally line edits, though some have the means to hire a proofreader as well. Agents may also suggest that you hire an editor to go through your book to tighten up the plot or character arcs. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but not every author can afford it. (Especially considering if money is the issue, you may be better off considering self-publishing if you’re going to hire editors anyway).

You should never query a manuscript you don’t have 100% confidence in. Querying is a grueling process. If you don’t have confidence in your manuscript, it makes it so much harder to endure the endless waiting and the myriad of rejections that will come your way before you ever find an agent (if you are lucky enough to land one!). It never hurts to ask a trusted writer friend to give feedback or even a positivity pass (a read-through with comments of praise) to help you on days you struggle to keep querying.

At this stage, it’s also good to understand your genre and who your target audience is. Researching potential agents and comp titles for your book makes it so much easier when you actually enter the querying trenches than doing so after a few rejections.

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Solid, Concise Synopsis

It’s a well-known joke in the writing community about how awful it is to write a synopsis. To condense an 80-100k+ word manuscript into a 500-1000 word summary is no easy feat. Most people hate them; it’s their least favorite part of the publishing process. It’s critical to have a good synopsis for querying, and while it’s not necessary for self-publishing, it can be a useful skill to have!

But what is a synopsis?

Essentially, a synopsis is a summary of the book you’re querying for publication. Unlike a blurb, which is the back cover copy of the book (or the summary on sale sites such as Amazon), a synopsis has all the crucial details of the story—and all the spoilers. The purpose of a blurb is to entice readers into reading the book. The purpose of a synopsis is to show the agent whether you can write a proper story. Knowing the stakes and important elements of the story shows that you know what a good story is and how to write one, and whether the ending is solid enough to make the book worth reading as a whole. Having proof of a proper manuscript concept without the agent having to read the whole manuscript is important.

While we’ll go into more detail about what a synopsis typically looks like in a future post, here are some things to keep in mind.

A synopsis needs to show the following:

• what characters we’ll care about
• clear conflict, what drives the conflict, and how the protagonist(s) succeeds or fails in dealing with it
• how the conflict is resolved and how the protagonist(s)’s situation, whether internal or external, has changed

Without these three core principles, the synopsis has failed. It doesn’t tell the story, and if anything, shows the agent that you don’t know your story as well as you ought.

Here are some other tips to keep in mind:

• tell, not show
• the synopsis is not to show off your flowery prose or dramatic phrasing, save that for the actual story
• avoid editorializing
• use active voice, third person present
• have beta readers/critique partners who read your manuscript give feedback on whether you summarized the story properly

It’s also a good idea to format your synopsis with your book’s title, word count, genre, and name at the top of the synopsis sheet. This makes it easier for the agent to keep track of details.

If you’re struggling to know how to begin your synopsis, a good tip that has always worked for me is to do a chapter-by-chapter summary of the story. Any important details must be recorded, as well as the most important characters. From that, you can cut extraneous phrases, etc., and shave the whole synopsis down to the required single page (or 500 words). Use the who-what-when-where-why method to determine what’s truly important. If it’s not relevant to the plot (can be explained and make perfect sense without said inclusion) then you can cut it from the synopsis. It can also be a good idea to put the main characters’ names in all caps the first time they’re mentioned, though that’s mostly a stylistic choice many authors decide to make.

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Clear, Well-written Query Letter

But of course, before the agent ever gets to the manuscript or the synopsis, they read the query letter. Queries are essentially about charming the agent into reading the synopsis and the manuscript excerpt. As with any skill, technique is required but also style. Technique tells the agent you at least know how to write a query letter and what the industry standard is for that. Style makes you and your work stand out from the rest of the crowd, and may convince the agent about opening up the synopsis and manuscript. Not every query should use the same exact formula, but knowing the basic outline is helpful.

We’ll discuss more details about query letters in the next post, but for now, here is the basic outline:

• Salutation (Dear [agent’s name])
• Personalization (a sentence showing a connection to the agent and why they’d be a good fit)
• What you’re offering (title, word count, genre/category, 1-2 comp titles)
• Compelling premise (a short, usually one-paragraph pitch about your book, similar to a back cover blurb)
• Biographical note (who you are as the author)
• Closing (thank the agent for their time and consideration, mention whether it’s under consideration by other agents, and then “Sincerely, YOUR NAME”)

The manner in which this is actually worded is entirely up to you as the writer. This is just the general formula for how the query is structured. The actual content will vary between writers, and that is totally fine! But more on queries in the next post!

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3-5 Pitches

Pitches are super helpful and so many authors would benefit by using them more often! This is because they’re easy to pull out at conferences or in conversation, can be used in Twitter pitching events, or even for marketing purposes! It’s not limited solely to Twitter usage.

But what is a pitch? Essentially, it’s one to two lines summarizing the main points of your book but in an exciting, gripping way. You’re essentially casting out your fishing hook and trying to bait agents (or readers, down the line) into giving your story a chance. And it’s not solely restricted to a couple of lines of text. You can also use lists, aesthetics, and emojis (in a digital scenario) to help you create a mood or setting for your pitch as well. We’ll talk more about these in a future post.

For now, ideally, you want to have 3-5 pitches available for variety, but at least have two to switch between. Only having one limits you with what you can do, especially if the pitch isn’t very solid.

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Optional

Separate Email

This is entirely optional. I never bothered with making a separate email for querying, but I know that a lot of aspiring published authors really benefit from having a separate email.

Querying is a stressful, lengthy process, and ideally, you want to mitigate the stress as much as possible. Having a separate email for querying means that you have to be intentional about checking it for responses to your queries without having to dread every time you open up your regular inbox and brace yourself in case there is a query response in there.

Having a separate email also means you can have an author email to present to agents, which has a more professional appearance than just your regular email.

This is certainly not required nor does it necessarily hurt your querying progress, but it can help aspiring querying authors! If you used a special email for your querying progress, let me know how it went in the comments!

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Querying Spreadsheet

A querying spreadsheet is optional, but during my querying days in the past, I found it super helpful to keep track of which agents I had queried, if I had interacted with them prior to querying (such as during Twitter pitching events), what the timeline was for an expected reply, and if they had requested more material or rejected it, as well as any feedback they had to give. I was very glad to have something keeping track of the time than me struggling to remember who all I had queried and when to expect a reply.

I used Google Spreadsheets, but any similar spreadsheet program should work fine. As an example, here is how I set mine up:

I censored out the agent/agency’s names for privacy reasons. But this very basic layout is how I kept track of the agents, the timing, and any feedback they might give. I also kept even the simple form rejections if they were positive, because querying is a very grueling process, and any positivity, regardless if it was form or not, was helpful.

There are several other resources you can use for vetting agents and keeping track of queries, but spreadsheets are free. Another free resource for keeping track is https://querytracker.net/ which can be also helpful for many authors!

A more detailed list of sites to find literary agents will be included in the next post, which will be about query letters!

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Conclusion

I hope all of this is helpful! I know that querying is overwhelming and grueling, and certainly not for the faint of heart. I hope this post helps demystify much of the process and what you need to begin querying, as well as how to prepare materials for querying agents. There are many other articles written about this as well, but I wanted to create one that was thorough and had as many details as possible instead of having to spend hours reading a variety of different opinions.

For those looking for more direct help, I also offer several querying services, which you can find here.

If you want further reading about the querying process and expectations, not just for authors, but also to see the side of agents and editors, I highly recommend checking out The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman. It’s very thorough and discusses all sorts of writer careers, not just querying.

Questions? Comments? Tips you’d like to add? Let me know in the comments!

Next post will be about query letters!