Tip

For my writer friends. When it's time to start querying, either bookmark these sites, or search "agencyname, this keyword" using these terms:

• publishers market place
• querytracker
• absolute write

Absolute Write is invaluable for providing feedback and information about QUERYING agencies, from and between writers.

Query Tracker shows tabs from each agent/agency searched which summarizes the genres they accept, and authors under representation with links to their amazon pages. This latter is extraordinarily helpful in researching an agency's catalogue, and whether they're right for your work.

Publishers Marketplace provides a truly deluxe presentation of recent sales, clients under representation and (often) specifics of an agency's catalogue, and specifics regarding querying (email, websites).

Never. Ever. EVER. Fail to look carefully at an agency's website for submission guidelines and sale, catalogue, author information. Most of the agents you really want to work with will highlight the heck out of these things, and pay close attention to sales in particular - you want an agent whose presence in publishing is still alive, is vital enough to provide you representation with a pulse. Consider how hard it is to navigate a site, and how a relationship with the people who built it might resemble the workings of the site itself. Think about what is most heavily emphasized and featured, and how well that suits you. Listen to what people say, outside the site itself. Think for yourself. Querying isn't about being desperately grateful for any and all attention; it is like job hunting: you're screening AGENTS as much as they're screening YOU. Remember that.

And send out acres of lovingly crafted queries - per EVERY single particular stipulated by each individual agent. They all want different things, and it's a pain in the behind, and it's an organizational nightmare. You have dozens of queries to work with - wah - it's so HARD to do each and every one individually, differently, hewing to every last picky requirement.

Do it anyway. Agencies have HUNDREDS, even THOUSANDS to read through; there are individual agents fielding upward of eight thousand queries in a year, kids. People who don't follow the guidelines they request to make that process easier and more navigable for themselves just provide agents reasons to delete, reject, or *resent* their queries. Don't do that.

For an administrative professional, it's funny - querying is an ideal project. The varying demands, the infinitessimal details, the checking and rechecking, the qeueing-up, the firing out, the following UP. It's all an organizational process, a project management challenge.

Writers: you are your own secretaries.

Be good at it. It makes life easier for the agents you're hoping to impress - and they LIKE that - and it makes life easier for YOU, in the end. And that's worth the work. Even if it is unpaid work - it might pay off when you do things right, and impress that perfect person, who will passionately advocate for you with the right houses.


Get to it, kids. Follow the bullets above, too, and it'll be a little easier.