How I Got My Agent

Surreal as it feels to write this, I now am officially repped by the amazing Bibi Lewis of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency. Bibi is such an enthusiastic cheerleader for my YA speculative thriller BROKEN MOON, and an all-around awesome human. I know my ferocious underdog protagonist Trina's story will be in excellent hands with her, and I cannot wait to get started on the work ahead of us!

In the meantime, I've had many fellow query trenchers reach out asking if I have any helpful thoughts to share based on my querying process. The answer is YES. I have spent the past year filling my head with super-niche knowledge that I will hopefully never need again, and I'm happy to pass it along to anyone it may help. Over the next little while, I'll be posting a small series exploring various aspects of the querying process and what I learned. 

For today, here are the basic stats for my querying process:

Months spent querying: 12

Number of queries sent: 130

Number of full requests: 16

Number of rejections/CNRs: 98

Number of queries withdrawn: 16

Number of offers: 3

But those stats don't tell the full story. I first queried from June to September of 2022, and my book was not ready. During that phase, I sent 40 queries and got one full request which turned into a pass. Not what I was hoping for.

Three things happened in the fall of 2022: I workshopped the first 200 pages of my manuscript through the Futurescapes conference. I was short-listed for the Fictionary Book of the Year Award, which came along with a great deal of support through webinars offered through the Fictionary community. And I stopped querying.

I spent the next several months doing a major structural revision, rewriting my inciting incident and then rippling that change throughout the rest of the book. The result was a book with significantly higher external stakes and a much faster pace. Now, it was truly ready to query. 

In January 2023, I waded back into the query trenches. Over the next six months I sent 90 queries and got 15 full requests — but that can be broken down even further. Four of those full requests came after I nudged with an offer of representation, which means that pre-offer, I got 11 full requests on the other 86 queries. That's a pre-offer positive reply rate of 13%.

This lines up with what I've read elsewhere: In today's querying environment, hitting a 10% positive rate means your query package is probably where it needs to be. That has implications for the size of query batches, and makes me think that the traditional advice of sending only 5-10 queries at a time to test your package might not be great. For me, the top-line takeaway is that even a very signable project is going to get rejected A TON on the way to finding the right agent. 

I ended up getting three offers. Making a decision was incredibly difficult, but I had previously met Bibi at an SCBWI event and knew that she was someone who got my work and would be a great long-term partner. I definitely have more to say about the importance of the SCBWI in my querying journey, which I'll explore in a future post.

Querying is not for the faint of heart, and most days I felt like I would never find an agent. Like I was simply screaming into an empty void. By at the end of the day, my first offer did came from a cold query in the slush pile. 

Yours can, too.