News Flash! Querying sucks.

I’ve heard many stories of now-successful authors who faced initial rejection. Stephenie Meyer, C.S. Lewis, John Grisham. The list goes on. (And on!) In fact, I think it would be harder to find an author who didn’t get rejected at least once.

The query process is, for most of us, a bitch. I’m pretty sure every agented and non-agented writer out there will agree that getting shot down is no fun. Regardless, that query letter is a necessary, yet evil, stepping stone on our quest for publication.

In my experience, here’s how the process generally works:

Step 1: You finally finish that blasted manuscript. And by finish, I mean you’ve edited the crap out of it, re-wrote entire chapters, and are pretty confident it’s done. DONE.

Step 2: You feel such a weight lifted off your shoulder because, hell-ooooh, you’ve just completed the next best-seller and who wouldn’t want to represent you? You compile a list of agents you just know will fight to the death for the chance to sell your masterpiece.

Step 3: You start drafting a query letter to send out to agents. If you’re new at this, you realize it’s not so easy. How can you summarize your entire story in one page? Much whining and gnashing of teeth ensues. 

Step 4: After days (or weeks?) toiling over this make-or-break letter, you think it’s ready. You immediately send it to your Dream Agent (you know, the one that represents your favorite author?). You’re sure they’ll immediately sign you, so you feel pretty good. You send the letter to a few other agents, just to be safe. Having options never hurt anyone, right? You send them by email, of course, because it’s so easy and who sends actual letters anymore?

Step 5: You wait. 

Step 6: You’re still waiting. Good grief, when will they respond already? Don’t they know you’re dying here?

Step 7: You get a rejection from one of the “other” agents. It’s a form letter basically saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.” There’s no feedback. No advice. No consolation prize.

Step 8: You are dev-a-stat-ed. A little voice emerges and tells you that at least Dream Agent hasn’t rejected you, yet. There’s still hope.

Step 9: You check your outbox and realize it’s been over three months since you sent those queries. No one else ever responded. Not even Dream Agent. You’ve been rejected à la the classic, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” method. 

Step 10: You take a good, hard look at your query letter and writing sample and decide to revise and try again.

And you do. Try. And try. And then try some more. Maybe you should've waited to send your letter to Dream Agent, huh?

If you’re only querying by email, there’s a good chance you’ll never hear back. Agents usually state this on their webpages. Most get hundreds, if not thousands, of queries every week, so can we blame them for only replying if interested? Not really. I mean, they have other things to do, you know, like sell books for their existing clients—the luckies who got that golden contract.

There are a few agents, however, who sent me a personal reply and offered me the tiniest tidbits of feedback, which I happily and thankfully gobbled up. It can happen. It’s pretty amazing when it does. The rejection stings a bit less.

Maybe one day you and I will get a request for more pages, but who knows. It’s frustrating and humbling and takes a long, long time. 

I’d love to hear from you. How is your query experience going? Did you find success? What’s your secret?

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Hopefully no one told you this would be “so easy a monkey could do it.” If so, they lied and you should definitely cut them out of your life.