Writers share several universal truths—an unhealthy love for the em dash, a never-ending pile of books we swear on our lives we’ll start reading “one of these days,” thinking of writing but somehow constantly putting it off, and so on and so forth. My favorite, however, is getting asked if you’ve ever written a book and when they could read it, followed closely by the ever-elusive and sweat-inducing “So, what’s your book about?”
What we should be talking about here, though, is how the question should be rephrased. It shouldn’t be, “Have you ever written a book? When can I read it?” but instead, “Have you ever written a book? When are you getting published?”
General Overview
If you’re reading this, chances are you already saw my announcement on Twitter/X (it still feels weird calling it that) or are in the process of starting your querying journey. I’ll be breaking down this post into an overview of my book, my process, and how I signed my agent. I’ll also add some tips, resources I used, and an overall feel and idea of the querying process because it surprisingly involves a lot of terminologies, waiting times, and technicalities I wasn’t aware of going in.
Here is a quick summary of the querying process:
Yay, you’ve written a book!
Before querying, it’s important to ensure you’ve undergone revisions, ideally with beta readers who can provide feedback and notes to improve your work further. It depends on you as to how many rounds of edits you’d want to go through before deciding you’re ready for the query trenches. Personally, I think that you’ll just know deep in your gut when your work is good to go. It also helps to ask your betas, of course, if they feel your book is ready to be shared.
Prepare a package
The writing doesn’t stop with the book itself. After revisions and edits, you’ll now have to work on a query letter, which is basically a cover letter outlining your book’s pitch, comp titles, and background. You’ll also have to prepare a synopsis, a one-line pitch, and a short biography (one or two lines will do!) Not all agents ask for these last three, but it helps to have them ready, especially the synopsis.Agent research
Agent research can be both fun and frustrating because you have to look out for two things: what they’re looking for and if they are open to queries. This is where QueryTracker (QT) comes in. Through QT, you can search for agents according to the genres they represent, their agencies, and even their clients. It’s pretty comprehensive as is, but they also have a premium option, which I’ll discuss further below. Another great resource would be the #MSWL website and social media tag, where agents share whatever kinds of stories they are currently seeking out. When researching agents, look out for agencies that require you to query only one agent at a time so that you don’t make the mistake of simultaneously querying two agents from the same place. Also, be mindful of each agent’s personal reminders to querying authors—some agents prefer accepting queries only through QueryManager (QM), others through email without attachments, which means you’ll have to paste your pages into the body of the email itself together with the query letter.
Sending + waiting
The real game starts once you’ve sent your query packages to prospective agents. Some agents provide querying authors with a timeline, i.e., “I aim to respond within [x number of weeks].” “If you haven’t heard back in [x number of weeks], assume it is a pass.” It helps to keep note of these timeframes, if available to you, so that you don’t drive yourself crazy constantly refreshing your inbox.Responses
Agent responses aren’t a straightforward “yes” or “no.” In general, if it’s a no, they will send you a rejection that could either be a form or a personalized rejection catered specifically for you that offers some feedback or insight as to why it was a no. Before you get a yes, an agent could either ask for a partial, which is the first 30 to 50 pages of your manuscript or the much-awaited full, a.k.a. your entire book. Some agents would offer a revise and resubmit (R&R) for pitches they enjoyed but need a few tweaks. For all three positive responses—partial, full, R&R—the querying author will have to wait for further feedback from an agent to see if they will ultimately pass or offer representation.
The Book
I’m saving the entirety of my book’s lore for when I’m published (fingers crossed; manifesting; claiming!!!!!), but the long and short of it is that I first wrote it as a teenager before revisiting it again as an adult over the pandemic. Overall, I’d say it was a ten-year journey just getting to this point. Its first draft was at around 117k words before I trimmed it down to 92k and, finally, to 83k, which felt just right for a Young Adult Contemporary book. I worked with a few betas, whom I met through Twitter/X’s #WritingCommunity, shed a ton of tears, made mood boards, and nearly gave up trying to get published more times than I could count.
Query Statistics and Strategy (or lack thereof)
I feel like I should have kept a spreadsheet alongside QueryTracker to have a more detailed breakdown of my stats since I’m pretty sure there were some agents I couldn’t log on there, so these numbers are based on the final number I have on my dashboard.
Queries Sent: 149
Negative Responses: 124 (83.8%)
Positive Responses: 14 (9.5%)
I sent my first query on May 7, 2023. I know it’s been a long-standing argument as to when the perfect time to query is, and I’ve always believed that you should query when you feel like you’re ready, but I want to point out a few things—
It’s true that publishing winds down over the holidays, so if you start sending out queries around Thanksgiving or Christmas, expect you won’t get any responses until after New Year’s.
There are a lot of agents who are open from May to July, but I made the mistake of mass querying. I’d send out at least 10 to 15 queries a day and wait for something to stick. Do not do this because if you do, be prepared to get a slew of consecutive rejections. Over time, I shifted to querying in small batches and only sending them out once I’ve gotten responses, i.e., I’d send out a batch of three to five queries today, look up agents I want to query for next time, and then contact them as soon as I’ve heard back from all the agents I just queried.
That said, many resources out there will tell you when to query, and based on my experience, I think this is the formula that no one has quite figured out yet. My querying journey “picked” up before the holidays because that was when I started getting fulls and partials. As mentioned above, I didn’t hear back from agents until after New Year’s. The best months for me were from February to April this year. I found that agents were responding faster with positive feedback! But again, this is only based on my experience. That old cliché about querying being mostly about timing and luck is 100000000% true.
Now that I’m writing all this down, I realize that my querying journey is a testament to my stubbornness. But hey, all you need is one yes!
My Query Letter
Throughout my journey, I had three versions of my query letter. For the first one, I worked on it for around a week and sent it off to some friends for critiquing—my thanks to Ate
and Juls, who were kind and patient enough to share their thoughts and insights!I can’t remember when I started working on the second version. All I know is that I was getting way too many rejections, which was probably a sign that I needed to fix something. This was also the same letter I used to join
’s October #10Queries Contest, which brings me to the final version of the letter…I am 26 and have never won any raffle my entire life, not even those office raffles during Christmas parties (or is that just a Filipino work culture thing?), so naturally, I was overjoyed when I won a #10Queries slot. I was lucky enough to work with Raquel Brown, who pointed out where to tighten the phrasing, bring out the hook, streamline the cause and effect, and, most importantly, incorporate newer comp titles.
Dear [Agent’s Name]:
I am pleased to share with you [TITLE], a Young Adult novel with crossover potential complete at 83,000 words. During #DVPit2023, an editor from HarperCollins expressed interest in seeing this project once I am agented and on submission. [TITLE] is a dual-POV coming-of-age novel that combines the fun and banter of classic YA novels like FLIPPED, IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY, and more recently, BETTER THAN THE MOVIES with the introspection of NORMAL PEOPLE and YOU ASKED FOR PERFECT. It also touches on loss, crime, and complex family dynamics, as seen in THE SOPRANOS and THE GODFATHER.
He was willing to bet his life away. She just wanted to pass algebra.
Following the footsteps of his infamous family, Nick Castiglione runs a business dedicated to selling test answers at his elite private school—much to the disappointment of his crime boss father. After breaking one rule too many, he faces the threat of suspension but is accidentally saved by perfectionist and golden girl Tracy Vanderbilt. To call it even, the two strike a deal: she takes care of his father’s punishment, a.k.a. babysitting his younger brother Richie, while he helps secure her academic standing with his stash of test answers and some tutoring.
They bond over homework, their misgivings about those around them, and the common complexities and dynamics of their contrasting families—Tracy with her privileged but unloving family, and Nick with his parents who want nothing more than for them to become a "perfectly normal family" despite their underground activities. But as the two find comfort in each other, their lives slowly unravel at the seams with a secret that threatens to destroy Tracy’s family and the signs of a looming war that would end Nick’s.
I am a Filipina journalist and law student with bylines in The Mary Sue and Popverse, mblife, and Epicstream. When not writing, I am likely catching up on my case law or traveling.
Best,
Danielle Baranda
The Call and Additional Resources
I had zero expectations the day I got my offer, which I’ll detail below. But when I did, I immediately sent a message to an agented friend, who recommended this post by Ann Zhao. It’s comprehensive and highlights all the significant points you’ll want to cover during your call. If you’re an anxious person like myself, remember that it’s totally okay to ask as many questions as you want. You should! This is an important and possible career-changing call!
Signing with My Agent, Emily Forney of Bookends Literary
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m afraid I’m a yapper. If you skipped right ahead, that was why I put headers. I was thinking of you, too. Anyway.
I first queried Emily in July, so roughly around the timeframe of the original version of my query package, which I am embarrassed to even think about in retrospect. I still remember seeing her tweets on my timeline and noticing she was open to queries. My thought process was mostly, “Hmm, I should probably shoot my shot,” but also, “Please, I’d never get a yes from her.” Very romcom-y, I know. She replied in October with one of the kindest rejection letters I’ve encountered at that point.
Fast forward to April of this year. I was still in the trenches, sending out the smallest batches of queries and joining pitch events whenever I could. At the time, Halle and Mia were hosting another round of #QuestPit, so I decided to take my chances—like the stubborn girl I am—and sent out this pitch.
I got two agent likes from this event—one from an agent who already had my query and the other from Emily! I reached out to both of them as soon as I could. I told the first agent that she already had my query, and she asked for my full. With Emily, though, I wanted to be fully transparent, so I reached out to ask if she’d been interested in reviewing my pages again since I’d already previously queried her, and she passed. Luckily, she said she wanted to see my work again anyway. This was on April 3rd. Fast forward to April 16th. All of my good friends can attest to this, but I’m a morning person by choice, which is a fancy way of saying I start my day at 5 am.
I usually keep my phone on Do Not Disturb at night, so when I started scrolling through my notifications, I noticed this one email from Emily with the subject line, “Follow Up to [BOOK TITLE].” I remember thinking, “Hmm, that’s odd. She made me resend my work through a QM link.” If you’re reading this and you’ve been in the trenches for a while, you probably already know that hack to determine if you’ve gotten a pass from QM based on reading the notification message: if it starts with “(This E-Mail address is not monitored. Please do not reply to this E-Mail. Your message will not be read.)” it’s definitely a pass. So that was my line of thinking—why was the reply via email when I sent the materials through QM? Since she said no before, is this a personalized pass, and we reconnected through a pitch event?
I considered putting off reading the email but decided against it so that I could just Be Done With It. Before I started querying, I told my significant other I would only do it for a year before calling it quits. He kept telling me not to give myself such a short deadline, so we bargained, and he made me promise I’d try for two years, but truth be told, I kept that one-year deadline hanging over my head. In other words, I was two weeks away from that original cutoff, so what was one more rejection, right?
I opened the email, and it was long. I still remember sitting up a little straighter, rubbing the sleep away from my eyes before messaging Juls:
I read the entire email once more, just for good measure. This was it—the call, my offer. I drafted a response and sent it an hour later because I was too busy freaking out while getting ready for the rest of the day. Emily responded as soon as I sent it, and we scheduled our call for the following week.
I was an anxious mess during the days leading up to The Call itself, which sucks because Emily was such a delight to talk to. I knew right then and there that I’d sign with her. There were details she caught about my book that assured me she just Understood It on a whole other level—most of the edits she was suggesting were either things that I already had incorporated in previous drafts or were still in my outlines; she was able to point out things I already wanted to go back to if ever I thought of doing revisions again; and most important of all, she just loved my characters and the book’s central themes.
Following industry standards, however, I still nudged my remaining queries and garnered several requests, but ultimately, I stood by my original choice and signed with Emily. And now I’m here, still with hints of disbelief and unbridled joy.
Some Do’s and Dont’s
Do: Pitch Events
I’ve been on Twitter/X since the 2010s, so believe me when I say I was there when the deep magic was written. However, I didn’t establish my writing account until 2022. Originally, it was meant to be a space where I could geek out about whatever books I was reading or films and TV I was watching before I realized I could also use it as a “writing” account. From there, I discovered the #WritingCommunity and various pitch events.
Pitch events are a great avenue to connect with industry professionals and fellow writers. It’s an opportunity to establish your network and find your “people.” Of course, it’s important always to remember to share only the right amount of information you feel comfortable with, especially regarding your work.
As mentioned above, I connected with Emily through #QuestPit, but I’d also previously participated in #DVPit (one of my favorite events! However, they’re on hiatus), #LuckyPit, #IWSGPit, and #RevPit. As a way of giving back, I’m helping out some friends moderate #SEAsianPit on May 25th!
Do: Query Critique Giveaways, Support Groups, and the #WritingCommunity
Writing can be lonely, but it doesn’t need to be. I’ve spoken a lot about this, but I will always be eternally grateful for the friends I’ve made at the #WritingCommunity. They’re my go-to people whenever I need to rant about any worries or fears and the first people I turn to when I need a fresh set of eyes to go over my work. I met most of my friends during pitch events and on Discord servers—some even made it out of my laptop screen and I’ve met IRL! It’s important, however, to be mindful of the people you interact with and only establish connections with persons you feel you can trust. Remember, a small but good network is better than a large one with questionable links.
Do: Write Something New!
This is a piece of advice I wish I had taken more seriously when I started querying because it involves a ton of waiting. You may as well make the most out of it. I can’t remember when I started writing my next book, but I’m positive I was at least six or seven months into the trenches. Don’t make the same mistake. Go out and explore new worlds, your next book is waiting for you.
Maybe: Premium QueryTracker Subscription
I considered getting a premium QueryTracker subscription but ultimately decided against it because I felt the basic version covered enough bases for me. That, and I know myself. Seeing where you are in an agent’s pile would do me more harm than good. I would constantly overthink everything. I had several friends who enjoyed the premium version, though, so it is still something worth pondering. From what I know, it also significantly helps with agent research since it also provides you with agents you might like to query based off your current list.
Don’t: Compare—it’s the thief of joy for a reason
The header speaks for itself. Don’t. Just don’t do it. Like everything else in life, we all operate according to our own timelines. Some people spend two weeks in the trenches, others a year. In my case, I was there for 345 days. Some people get their yes after 20 no’s, others after a hundred. It varies. There isn’t a formula to this.
Don’t: Obsess Over Your Email
This is another mistake I made during querying: I didn’t set up an email solely dedicated to querying. For your own piece of mind, I highly recommend that you do this to keep yourself from obsessing over notifications.
Final Thoughts
If you read this far, thank you. Literally. Substack just informed me that I am nearing the email length limit. Again, I suppose I’m just a yapper. I hope this newsletter was insightful and that you have a great day/night wherever you are! Never ever give up 🤍