Pitching the Query
In which I emerge from the bullpen refreshed for the query process
On social media, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn and the like (I don’t do Facebook and the ‘gram), so many people fill the interwebs with awful advice and misconceptions of the writing and publishing world.
“Editors will reject a manuscript for one bad comma.”
“If you don’t pay 10s of thousands of dollars, agents won’t accept your book.”
“Revising and editing is a waste of time. I’ll just self-publish.”
The fact is, the world of publishing is very competitive. But trying to get a book traditionally published is a straightforward process:
Create a work (write well, revise revise revise and edit as well as you can)
Query agents and editors.
Take rejections in stride and keep trying.
Find ONE person who believes in your work who will say “Yes,” and go from there.
From sales of the book to published copy is about an 18- to 24-month period of time. The 100th anniversary of The Waste Land will be over by then (only a few months left), but The Waste Land will live on. My story will still resonate with The Waste Land.
Please help support my efforts to get my memoir, My Own Private Waste Land, traditionally published. Sign up for a FREE subscription or choose a pay option. This is a time-consuming process. Returning to an “essential worker” job will seriously hamper my efforts. Thank you for your support.
In a long career in academia, I had some familiarity with the publishing process, but I kept my focus on teaching and grading. A partner went back to school and wrote a paper for a class - “The benefits of a pet on a family.” The instructor asked if anyone did anything with those papers that they wrote weekly, as a way to encourage them to think professionally about their writing. One evening, my partner revised the paper, researched five publications that would be interested in such a topic, and fired off 5 quick emails with the paper attached. Within a couple of weeks, a publication had accepted the work. She would get a byline, a professional writing credit, but it didn’t pay anything. It would appear in both online and print versions of the publication. Once the essay was published, the publication had reformatted and changed it slightly, made it significantly better, but it was definitely still her work. Voila! She was a published writer. I was amazed at the quickness of the process, and the ease with which she threw her hat into the ring and found success.
The road to getting a book published is the same, though a little more time-consuming.
The writing in my book is strong, compelling, captivating. The more people I tell my story to, the more people who see my writing, the more they ask where they can buy the book.
When I first finished my book, I hit the query road immediately. I had collected agent information a year and a half previously as I had smelled the ending of my writing project. That ending took a while, between cross-country moves and soul-sucking jobs.
When I finished my book for the second time, I started the query process. My book was still too long, at 168,000 words. But I dutifully sent off my query letter and manuscript samples. Crickets. I received the occasionally response - “this is not for me.”
But I was also preparing my manuscript for the Atlanta Writer’s Conference in May 2022. The next revision took 5 months, reducing the 168,000 words to under 100,000 words. At the conference, I worked with three editors on my query letter and my manuscript sample. One agent rejected the work out of hand on the query letter alone. You can read a previous newsletter from May for his comments. It’s not worthy of repetition. Another agent was provisionally interested. Granted, this work is experimental and must find the right placement in the publishing world. Memoir is a booming genre, especially after a memoirist won the Nobel Prize in Literature, so the writing must be top notch.
But one thing I discovered is that good writers don’t necessarily write good query letters. This is an enigmatic form. Editors offer courses and services to help writers craft query letters. There are books devoted to writing the query letter and book proposals. You have to tell just enough of the story to intrigue an agent to want to read beyond the manuscript sample. You have to be specific to the story. You must explain concisely why you are the one to write this book and who your audience is. You have to provide all of that concisely, in no more than a single page.
I had never written a query letter before. As I waited for my time to speak with an agent at the conference, one of the door monitors bemoaned the process - “there are so many good writers here. But how are they supposed to know how to write a query letter? They have to learn how to write that. It’s not a natural form. They may have written dozens of stories but have never written a query letter before.” I was among those who had never written a query letter before.
Based on the feedback I received at the conference, my query letter was a stumbling block: too dense, too dark and depressing, too long. I benefitted from the workshops, wrote and refined the query until I had something better than what I started with. And then I sought out a professional editor for which I paid money for help writing the query based on feedback I had received from agents at the conference. Sure, I could string some sentences together. But a query letter is a sales pitch. I have never been a very good salesperson.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, when I first started teaching as a graduate student on a 10-month contract, I had to find a job between school years. I took a position as a door-to-door World Book encyclopedia salesperson. I was given three leads to start. I lugged that suitcase house to house on the Northwest side of town, across the river in the wealthier areas where young families were establishing their first residences. In several months, I couldn’t sell a single volume, even with a lead for someone who wanted to buy! I visited one woman’s house three times, only to have my boss follow up with me and make the sale. I think I quit on the spot. I never did make one sale that summer.
After I received back my professionally-edited query letter, I sent my mansucript to three people I had made contact with at the conference. One person expressed interest but with such a tender hand, that it became clear she was having difficulty saying “this is not for me.” Two other editors considered my work and got back to me with genuinely kind letters of rejection.
And then, the silence grew.
Our move from Atlanta to Seattle became our focus. I had worked on this book for more than 3 1/2 years, and it was done. I would take this new query letter and with renewed energy and vigor, hit the market again.
Except . . . I started getting writing group feedback on my work. It was clear I needed some additional help to craft the voice in the memoir. But that meant, jumping back in for another revision. So I began tinkering with my writing again. As I study developmental editing more, I also gleaned some ideas for revising the larger sections of my book.
But for the most part, the book is done. Everytime I go back to look at it (and I compare it to a lot of other polished drafts that comes across my desk), I think . . . yes, this is good writing. My book needs to be published. This story needs an agent and an editor.
How did we get from May to October so quickly? I checked my query tracker records. I sat on that new query letter, concerned about the quality of my work.
Doubt is a serious liability for any writer. It comes with the territory. Even the best of writers doubt their efforts at times. But revision can improve any writing effort. Intelligent thought about writing can lead to better writing.
Let me know what struggles you have with your own writing and doubt. How do you keep the ego strong while facing the massive amounts of rejection that come with the querying game? Let me know in the comments below.
Every interview I read with agents, they hit the same note - “the writing must be fantastic.”
My Own Private Waste Land will stand on its own legs. The story and writing are fantastic. Agents, I’m ready for you.
Yesterday, I dusted off my agent list and started the querying process over again. So I’m back to querying. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I wish for you an enjoyable fall season. It has cooled a bit here in the PNW but it’s still mild and sunny days. I know the rains will come someday. But then, just like when I moved to San Diego, the rains stopped. Maybe it’ll never rain in Seattle again and be boating season all year round. Perhaps I carry a bit of the waste land with me wherever I go, drying the rivers and streams.
Someday the rains will come again and revitalize these dry lands. Someday, an agent will respond to my query letter with - yes, yes, yes.
Until then, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!