Timing your queries

First rule is to send each agent an individual email. Don't CC everyone in a single blast. Take time to personalize their queries or at least include their names.

Second, you might want to send queries in batches. Pick five or ten (not necessarily all your top choices) and email them first. This way, if you get a lot of form rejections you can always revise the query and send the improved version to the next batch.

You only get one shot (usually) per book with each agent. You don't want to send them all a query it turns out doesn't work.

Other people have different processes, but this is the one I must often seen recommended.

I agree, personalize everything, no email lists. Sending them one by one is the way to go, trying to address each agent's specific requests and interests.

It's wise to send your query in small batches of 6'ish or so and see how the responses go. That way you won't burn through too many agents on your list if you later find out that your query or opening pages were not as strong as they could be.

as mentioned you ideally want to query in a manner that includes doing your homework, which will slow you down from a one-day blast anyway, but also it is a good idea to send out 5-10-15 at a crack and see what response you get--if you get 20 form rejections for 20 queries, better to know and re-evaluate the query while you still have 60 agents you can pitch to.

This is all great info, but what bothers me the most is, at what point does Dream Agent get queried??

Not saying that I have the world's most kick-ass query, but what if, in my first round of queries, I'm offered rep and Dream Agent hasn't even been queried yet?

On the other hand, if my query turns out to suck lemons, I don't want to send that one out to Dream Agent before I've "tested the waters" and had a chance to revise!

GAH! This is all so complicated!

I would do a mix of dream agents and maybes in each batch. If you have a couple of agents you'd eat a bowl of habanero peppers to work with, I'd work them in your second batch or so. Honestly, it's a gamble because you could get a very quick response or you could wait a year for a response. So my personal approach would be to wait to see if my initial couple of batches get a response and then query my dream agent.

I did a test run of 2 agents with my query letter and got one partial request the next day. At that point I started sending out about five queries a week starting with those I was most interested in. Still took almost a year before I connected with the agent I signed with.

If I hadn't gotten a positive response from that first test I would have tweaked then tested again with agents from the middle of my list. But once I was satisfied the query was capable of catching interest I didn't wait to query my Dream Agent.

Building on paddismac's question: How long does an agent who offered you rep wait for your answer? If you have a rep offer from Maybe Agent, but Dream Agent hasn't answered yet (or you haven't even queried him yet), can you ask MA to wait, and ask DA to hurry up with an answer?

One thing, though..."dream agent"...OK, you have your heart set on someone, but you really don't know that's the best agent for you. I've heard it said by many that the person a writer thinks is his/her dream agent could turn out to be the bestest, but could just as easily be not so dreamy after all. So, if you have a selection of agents you'd really like to work with, a top tier of 5 or 10, then you don't have to feel so stressed about THE ONE, or that you've squandered your only opportunity.

Well, sometimes the Maybe Agent is actually a better fit than Dream Agent and that's something you can't know for sure until you talk to the person making the offer.

And, you should never go with Maybe Agent just because they've made an offer. If they have the right qualifications, jibe with your vision of your book, and are enthusiastic about your writing goals, then that's a good reason to consider accepting an offer.

That being said, you don't want to ask an agent to wait more than 1-2 weeks before you let them know about accepting or not accepting an offer. And most agents are not going to get back to you in a week or two unless they've already been considering the material. (Some will, but you cannot count on it.)

I can tell you that the agent you think will work may not always be the one that does. When I was querying I thought I would get an offer from someone who sounded like she clicked with my project. Only she didn't and I wound up with someone else that I had never expected to be really interested. (Who is totally fantastic, btw.)

megajo29 said:

Building on paddismac's question: How long does an agent who offered you rep wait for your answer? If you have a rep offer from Maybe Agent, but Dream Agent hasn't answered yet (or you haven't even queried him yet), can you ask MA to wait, and ask DA to hurry up with an answer?

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One week is pretty standard. If you ask for much more than that, unless there's a big holiday or book fair during that week, MA may realize they're only an MA and not a DA.

ElaineA said:

One thing, though..."dream agent"...OK, you have your heart set on someone, but you really don't know that's the best agent for you. I've heard it said by many that the person a writer thinks is his/her dream agent could turn out to be the bestest, but could just as easily be not so dreamy after all. So, if you have a selection of agents you'd really like to work with, a top tier of 5 or 10, then you don't have to feel so stressed about THE ONE, or that you've squandered your only opportunity.

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Totally. You can have a general sense of whether they'd cotton to your writing based on their lists, and you can see who has great sales. But you really can't know who'd be a dream to work with until you talk to them and see how well they understand and can support your work and your goals, how they communicate, how they plan to pitch your work and where, how they envision your career developing, etc.

I probably have 30 agents in my "top tier" list, but sadly, more than half of that list is concentrated into 3 or 4 agencies with a "query one agent only" policy.

I want to believe that they share queries and pages with the other agents in their office, but... It's just really scary and frustrating at the same time.

paddismac said:

I want to believe that they share queries and pages with the other agents in their office, but... It's just really scary and frustrating at the same time.

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If they say they share them, then they do.

What's most likely to happen is they have a well-briefed intern or two working through the queries, and she understands that anything which shows promise should be forwarded to the appropriate agent.

Thanks for the answers, everyone. I do have more than one Dream Agent based on my research, but my hypothetical scenario can still arise.

What I mean by Dream Agent is: 1. they represent my genre; 2. they sell well in my genre. Sure, you can't know what their vision is for your book until you talk to them. But if you 'click' with a Maybe Agent who doesn't have the right connections, your book may stay unpublished. Or get published by a small imprint who has no resources to help with publicity. I feel that in that case, it's better to self-publish.

Btw, how long does an agent have to sell your book? If they can't sell it in X months, are you free to seek another agent and/or self-publish? I assume such things are in the contract?

Your current DA is usually not the real DA. S/he's just a stand-in so your mind has someone to worship while you're querying. megajo29's idea of DA is what most people should try to adopt: not a single person, but a group of people that support the genre and have a good sales history.

That said, what are everyone's thoughts on querying your top-top-top-DA only after you have an offer in hand, especially if that DA responds to queries super-quickly?

Old Hack said:

If they say they share them, then they do.

What's most likely to happen is they have a well-briefed intern or two working through the queries, and she understands that anything which shows promise should be forwarded to the appropriate agent.

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Thanks for this, Old Hack. This helps to take a teeny tiny bit of the worry out of the idea of submitting to the "right" agent within a group of really great agents! Still scary as all heck, but maybe it gets less so with time and experience.

paddismac said:

This is all great info, but what bothers me the most is, at what point does Dream Agent get queried??

Not saying that I have the world's most kick-ass query, but what if, in my first round of queries, I'm offered rep and Dream Agent hasn't even been queried yet?

On the other hand, if my query turns out to suck lemons, I don't want to send that one out to Dream Agent before I've "tested the waters" and had a chance to revise!

GAH! This is all so complicated!

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Query Dream Agent at the first request for a full.

Wilde_at_heart said:

Query Dream Agent at the first request for a full.

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This is stellar advise, and now I'm feeling really stupid that I hadn't thought of it myself! Thanks!

Wilde_at_heart said:

Query Dream Agent at the first request for a full.

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I had 2 full requests from top agencies before I queried DA. I received a form reject. In retrospect, my query was in horrible shape despite the full requests.

Had I to do it over, I would've held out as long as I possibly could. Then waited an additional 3 months from that date. Then waited 1 more week. Then 1 more day. And another day. And then blindly hit send, because that's when you're done.

megajo29 said:

What I mean by Dream Agent is: 1. they represent my genre; 2. they sell well in my genre. Sure, you can't know what their vision is for your book until you talk to them. But if you 'click' with a Maybe Agent who doesn't have the right connections, your book may stay unpublished. Or get published by a small imprint who has no resources to help with publicity. I feel that in that case, it's better to self-publish.

Btw, how long does an agent have to sell your book? If they can't sell it in X months, are you free to seek another agent and/or self-publish? I assume such things are in the contract?

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First, why would you even be querying agents that don't represent your genre or have connections in it? They all tend to be very clear on what they do represent, and are not likely to list things they don't know how to sell, so your criteria seem more like a list for possible agents, not dream agents.

Second, this varies for people, but lots of agents take on clients for their careers, not a specific book. You want to find someone that wants to be with you for the long haul, and you want to be with them too.

Here's a hard truth, sometimes novels don't sell. And it's not a factor of an agent not trying. Even if you left them and found another, chances are it still wouldn't sell. There are only so many places to submit, and if an editor says no to Agent A, then Agent B is not going to send the same manuscript back just to be told no again.

If you end up with an agent, the book doesn't sell, and you end up wanting to self-publish, talk to your agent about it. Maybe they can help.

Again, this is all general information, and I am sure that exceptions exist, and contracts vary.

Lady Chipmunk said:

First, why would you even be querying agents that don't represent your genre or have connections in it? They all tend to be very clear on what they do represent, and are not likely to list things they don't know how to sell, so your criteria seem more like a list for possible agents, not dream agents.

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Fair enough, my first point is superfluous. I do mean the second point, though. Lots of agents say they represent thrillers, but not all of them sell to the Big 5. And my feeling is that, aside from the quality of the book, sales are greatly influenced by the agent's connections. Insider track and all that. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think that the same book rep-ed by a Writers House agent has a better chance of being picked by a top publisher, than if it's rep-ed by a start-up agency.

megajo29 said:

Fair enough, my first point is superfluous. I do mean the second point, though. Lots of agents say they represent thrillers, but not all of them sell to the Big 5. And my feeling is that, aside from the quality of the book, sales are greatly influenced by the agent's connections. Insider track and all that. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think that the same book rep-ed by a Writers House agent has a better chance of being picked by a top publisher, than if it's rep-ed by a start-up agency.

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Certainly experience is going to have some sway on an agent's effectiveness. Predators and Editors is a good place to check out as it identifies the really bad agents to avoid, and also the really good ones. And if you can check out recent deals at PM, that can help too.

I guess for me, if you don't feel like an agent can help you get where you want, I just wouldn't query that agent. That said, new agents at experienced agencies can be amazing, so it really all does come down to lots of factors.

Eh, I did a post a while back on statistics and queries.

How many queries you send out really depends on what you think your best response rate is. Until you get an expected response rate of ~25%, the batch rate doesn't really tell you much. (Statistically speaking.) So likely it makes sense to just send them all out at once. (Personalized, of course, and with the best query you can give. But! Sending out 10 queries and getting 0 yeses means pretty much nothing if you don't expect a fairly high yes rate.)