The Querying Sands

After you’ve hiked the Line Edit Foothills, you come to a crossroads: Do you try to entice a traditional publisher to edit, design, produce, and market your book; do you do that work on your own to self-publish; or do you start a new writing project?

If you want a publisher to put out your book, you’re going to trek through the Querying Sands, a hostile-looking path.

A query letter is a brief message that introduces your book’s hook, length, and other details and invites literary agents or acquiring editors at publishing houses to read the book. (Queries not physical letters these days—they’re usually emails or messages sent through contact forms.)

If the agent or editor likes what they see in the query, they’ll request more materials (sometimes a sample of your book, sometimes the whole thing). If they like that, you’re making headway! If an agent or editor loves your book and can imagine a sufficient audience for it, they’ll make an offer to go into business with you.

A Caravan Offer

Agents will offer to do their darndest to sell your book to a publisher and to help you take advantage of all the other rights associated with your book. They do this in exchange for 15% of your advance and royalties on book sales. Their percentages are different for when they sell rights for foreign editions, film and TV options, and other projects derived from your work.

An agent basically offers to take you in their caravan through the Querying Sands. A good agent gets your book in front of more editors (large publishing houses rarely take submissions from authors without agents), and they have established relationships with acquisition editors, so they know who to send certain books to.

Essentially, an agent knows where all the desert oases are and has traveled this path before.

Take Heart—and Drink Water

Whether you are querying agents or out on submission in an agent’s caravan, the Querying Sands can be grueling. Your book is going out into the world, and a lot of people are going to reject it. There’s just no getting around that point. Even stellar, professional-level manuscripts receive buckets of rejections.

So take care of yourself during the querying process. (Drink your water, fool!) Keep going … and don’t shy away from starting another journey through the Draft Marshes while you’re playing the waiting game. Do what you need to do to stay healthy during the process: eat well, exercise (whatever that looks like for you), stay in touch with supportive friends and family, and find other things to focus on while you play the waiting game.

Staring a heat mirages won’t help—and neither will constantly refreshing your inbox. Find some shade and some friendly faces.

Help Along the Way

Writing a query is different from writing a novel. A query doesn’t tell a story: it entices readers to read more about your book. It also provides details that help agents and editors understand your intended audience (like the length of your book, its genre category, and its comp titles). Last, it gives any relevant biographical details about you, the author.

So how do you learn to write a query after spending all this time learning how to write novels?

The first query-related resource I always point fiction writers to is Query Shark.^[1]If you’re a nonfiction writer hanging out in my fantasy RPG-inspired writing map, visit Jane Friedman’s nonfiction book proposal advice instead. This blog by agent Janet Reid provides so much material about how to write a query. There are years and years of good and bad examples of queries with Reid’s commentary on them. The blog also has many examples of bad queries that go through several revisions—that you get to read!—to become good.

The next resource I point to is authors Charlie N. Holmberg and Caitlyn McFarland in their podcast episode about querying. I knew Charlie when she was querying to get her agent, and she was a querying beast. (She’s still a beast out on submission, she just has an agent going with her!) This podcast points you to resources to research agents and gives you tips on how to manage logistics, maintain a healthy mindset about rejection, and more.

You can (and should) test out your query on your writing group and other publishing-adjacent people. Don’t worry so much about testing your query on readers in general. A query is a publishing-industry tool. It doesn’t need to appeal or make sense to people who aren’t in the industry.

If you’ve done all that and want some extra help, many independent editors help with query letters and submission packages.^[2]A submission package for a novel includes your query and the other basic materials many agents request, like a synopsis and your first chapter.

Where to Next?

If you find a good-fit agent or publisher who’s interested in representing you or publishing your work, huzzah and praises be! You’re now on the traditional publishing trail. If you’re with an agent, they’ll walk you through your next steps. Once your book has a home with a publisher, it will probably go through more revisions and line editing before pivoting to copyedits and design.

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If you’d rather publish your book yourself, learn about splitting the party to tackle editing and design tasks at the same time.