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GREENWICH

I’ve gotten a bunch of smart questions recently from writers getting ready to query or in the query trenches, and several of them seemed useful to answer together. So today: a focus on beta readers, followed by a round of questions about prologues, multiple POVs, and whether/how to disclose an old round of representation and submission history.

Dear Kate,

I’ve not had any official arc readers before I started querying. Is this important? Do publishers or agents ask for that feedback, or is it for the purpose of improving your manuscript?

- Catherine

Dear Catherine,

An important terminology note: ARC = Advance Reader Copy or Advance Review Copy. These are early copies of a book that go out pre-publication to book reviewers, influencers, media people, etc. This happens when you’re getting ready to release a published book and want to give some people an early look so they can spread the word and help build momentum pre-release. They might leave a review after reading, but that’s not the same as giving feedback. You aren’t changing the book at this stage.

At any earlier stage in the writing/querying/submissions process, you’re talking about what’s known as alpha/beta readers or critique partners—people who read your drafts with an eye toward giving you thoughtful, actional feedback as you revise.

You don’t need early readers before querying. Beta readers aren’t a formal requirement, and agents aren’t out there asking what feedback you got before they’ll consider reading your work. Publishers will never ask for a beta-reader report card. The point of outside feedback isn’t to jump through some industry hoop. As you note, it’s for the purpose of improving your manuscript well before it goes to print.

Having fresh eyes on your work can give you new perspectives and make you aware of how your words are landing—or aren’t. Feedback can reveal plot holes, missed opportunities, and places where the book could go deeper or become clearer. When you write a book, you’re so close to the material. But not everything will translate automatically from your mind to the page and then to the reader, and feedback can help clarify where those gaps exist. Sometimes readers will think of things that you missed or haven’t considered, and once they say it, you can’t imagine your book without it. Sometimes readers will have suggestions that make you go helllllll no, and then after more time and thinking, you realize oh wait….

If this is your first book or you’re early in your writing life, it can be hard to find the right early readers. Not all feedback is created equal. Someone who tears apart your work or tries to make it what they would write isn’t necessarily invested in your craft or your journey, and you don’t have to accept criticism just because someone has an opinion. Likewise, someone who only praises your work isn’t really digging into the material, so while their encouragement may be emotionally important, it doesn’t always help the book itself. You want readers whose opinions you trust, who are rooting for you but aren’t afraid to be rigorous and tell you the truth. It’s up to you as the writer to decide what feedback to implement—you aren’t writing by committee, and you can’t say yes to everything (see the previous post on saying no to edits).

I do think feedback is enormously helpful, though, especially when you’re so close to your own work that it’s hard to see the manuscript clearly anymore. I work on my own until I hit a wall and feel like I can’t take the book any further by myself, and then I rinse and repeat until it’s ready for my agent, rinse and repeat with my agent until it’s ready with my editor, rinse and repeat with my editor until it’s ready for the world. Even then, I still seek outside opinions—I’ve been revising my next book with my editor, and I still sent it out just a few weeks ago to a new round of trusted readers. More established authors sometimes limit their feedback to only their agent and editor, since those are the people who are professionally invested in the work in ways a random outside reader might not be. But it’s hard for me to imagine a manuscript being truly ready for querying without having received any feedback at all.

This isn’t AT ALL meant to discourage you—you won’t know until you try. But if you aren’t sure, or if you start querying and aren’t getting the responses you hoped for, a good place to start would be to get some more eyes on your work.

Dear Kate,

My Book is 436 pages, of which 26 are prologue. Do I use the prologue in the query letter or just send chapter one.

- Ron

Dear Ron,

If an agent asks for the first X pages or the first Y chapters, send the book as it actually begins—which includes the prologue. You don’t need to explain or qualify it in the letter. Just send the number of pages or chapters the agent requests, starting with the very first page.

If you skip ahead to chapter one because you think that’s the “real” beginning, it can make it seem like you don’t think the prologue is really necessary and are trying to route around it. Plus if the agent requests the full manuscript and what you send back has a different beginning than the sample you first sent, it’s going to create confusion.

Make sure the prologue is doing indispensable narrative work, and isn’t mostly context/mood/backstory/worldbuilding that’s creating a long runway before the main story begins. Even if it’s in a different tone/setting/register than the rest of the narrative, it has to do the same work of any opening and draw the reader in. Twenty-six pages is on the long side for a prologue—which doesn’t mean it can’t work. Just that you want to bring your sharpest editorial eye to your opening (and then to everything else!).

Dear Kate,

Query about multi POV. My novel is about a bet to create a friendship group between the MC and her antagonist. It incorporates 3 other characters as part of the bet. The story is told in close third person about 65% of which centers on the MCs perspective. The remainder is where the other characters interact with the MC/and/or the antagonist, again in third person from their individual POVs. Should I position this as a multiple pov- all 5 are essential to the main plot- when querying? My beta readers have said it is clear whose POV they are in as each character is distinct. All have a character arc. I have chapter headings which say character x or character x & y for 100% clarity. Thanks for your advice.

- Tracy

Dear Tracy,

Yes, position this as a multi-pov novel—but it can be conveyed more simply in the query than in the manuscript itself. The query doesn’t have to reproduce the exact architecture of the book, and it shouldn’t foreground all five POVs.

If 65% of your manuscript focuses on one main character, that’s a strong clue that the query should focus on that character as well. Describe the bet through the lens of that character, so you aren’t giving the agent too many names to keep track of in a short pitch. You can bring in the antagonist and maybe one other character if they’re absolutely necessary to understanding the setup and the stakes. But in most cases, it’s enough to say that the novel is told through multiple POVs, while keeping the actual pitch anchored to the clearest central line of conflict.

You don’t need to say anything in the query about how each POV is distinct or that readers found it clear, or that the chapter headings label the perspectives. The agent will see all that when they read your manuscript, and will come to their own conclusions. It sounds like the manuscript itself is clear about the characters and their arcs, so now it’s just about distilling enough of the main character’s journey into a sharp and irresistible pitch.

Dear Kate,

I will soon be querying a novel that I originally wrote around 20 years ago, which had an agent and went out on submission to all the big publishers. It did not sell and the agent and I parted ways. It has since gone through major revision but the basic story is the same. In querying, do I have to tell agents that I had prior representation for an earlier version of the book and that the earlier version was seen and rejected by major editors (who may or may not still be working)?

- Ruth

Dear Ruth,

I went back and forth on this question, because normally I’d say to add a short line at the end—after the pitch and before your bio—briefly disclosing the manuscript history. Something like: “A different version of this manuscript went on submission in [year] and didn’t sell. The agent and I amicably parted ways in [year] and I’ve since substantially rewritten the book.”

But twenty years is a long time, especially in publishing. There’s been a lot of turnover in editors, and the market—as well as your book—are completely different now. In your case, I think it’s probably fine to leave this out of your query and then bring it up if/when you’re on a call when an agent who’s making an offer.

The only caveat to this would be if you’re querying the same agency that previously represented you. In that case a short note feels like a good idea, since the agency might have a record of your relationship with them: “A previous iteration of this project was represented by [Name] at this agency in [year]; it’s since been entirely rewritten.”

In the meantime, waiting in the query trenches is a great time to start something new. If this manuscript doesn’t land, you’ll have a brand new book to go out with. And if you do get a deal for the new book, you’ll have another opportunity to see about resurrecting this older, revised manuscript, too.

Querying can make it feel like every small decision is loaded with make-or-break significance. But all that really matters is following the agent’s guidelines and putting forth your best work. In the worst case scenario, you’ll either hear “no” or you’ll never hear back at all. Which stings, but is par for the course even if you DO do everything “right.” (And, spoiler alert, the silence and rejection will never, ever end, even after you’re published.)

There isn’t one magical correct answer, and you might have to try different versions of your query until you see what sticks. When in doubt, think clear, brief, sensible, and professional. Be upfront without overdisclosing, and look at the jacket copy for books in your genre to see how they establish genre, premise, stakes, and tone. A blurb isn’t the same thing as a query, but it can help you see how to distill a story down to its clearest, strongest throughline.

If you’ve got a query, craft, or publishing question of your own, send it my way!

And keep writing!

Kate

Come see me Saturday in Bryn Mawr, PA! Details and upcoming tour dates are on my website: katebroad.com/events.

Read more about Greenwich here. (People Best New Book • Vanity Fair Selection • BookBub Best New Fiction • Amazon Editor’s Pick)

• Interviews: Chicago Review of Books • Totally Booked • The Long Road to Publishing • Read with Jul

• Essays: Electric Literature • LitHub • A Refuge from Censorship Part II: Substack.

• Short work: “Exene” (Bellevue Literary Review) • “Lipstick” (The Baltimore Review) • “Word of Mouth” (The Brooklyn Review) • “Care and Feeding” (The Rumpus) • “Good Dead Girls” (No Tokens)

Ask an Author is a reader-supported newsletter with advice and support for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. If you know someone this applies to, you can forward them this email and encourage them to sign up. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future post.

Subscribe

Ask a Question

Share

GREENWICH

In my last post, “The Pitch Clinic,” I promised I’d follow up with a Query Starter Kit. So here we are!

If you’re one of the hundreds (!) of new faces hanging around Ask An Author lately, welcome! Yay! In recent posts, I’ve been talking about how you’ll always be pitching your book. You can go back and read about pitching and see how I responded to people’s one-liners. But distilling your book into its main components happens long before it appears on shelves. Querying is the first place where all this gets real.

I’ve done a number of posts on querying in the past—you can find them in the “On Querying” section of the archive. But it’s been a little while, so I wanted to make some updates. All my work on pitching my own book has helped me get clearer and more streamlined about what a query needs to do, too.

This post is meant to be a practical starting point as you draft or revise your query. But I hope the template I offer below is useful outside of query letters, too—because you always need a handle on what your book is about. I’ll also link to a few older posts to reference. And I’ve got some query-adjacent questions from the mailbag at the end, plus more coming soon. If you’ve sent another question and I haven’t responded yet, don’t worry, you’re in the queue!

Before you query: the readiness checklist

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: querying is a huge amount of work, and many people query too soon. (I’ve been guilty of this, too.) These few hundred words represent years of effort, and while no single email will make or break you, the stakes are high.

Here’s what I want to be true for you before you hit send:

Your manuscript is finished. Not “I’m close.” Not “it’s with beta readers now.” Drafted all the way to the end, revised, put away to get distance, revised again, read by other people, revised again, as strong as you can possibly get it right now, and then polished and edited to a shine. If you want proof that this takes forever, here’s a frank post about how goddamn long it took me to write and revise Greenwich.

Your first pages are doing their job. By page 1-5, the reader should know who we’re with, where we are, and why we should keep reading. The rest of the book of course needs to hold up, but no one is going to slog to page 112 before it “gets good.” See: A Guide to Your Opening Pages.

You can explain, generally, what your book is about. You don’t have to do it perfectly, but being able to answer “what’s it about?” is a pretty good sign that something happens in your book and all the elements hang together. If A doesn’t tie into B, or you’re hoping nobody notices C kind of disappears, it’s time to keep revising. See: How to Write a One-Line Pitch. You get more than one line in a query, but this exercise can help you zero in on your plot and stakes.

You can tolerate rejection without combusting. I don’t mean “feel nothing.” I mean that you have a support system and something else to work on while you wait. This industry rewards persistence more than talent. How will you take care of yourself so you don’t quit? See: On Rejection.

If you aren’t ready to query, that’s ok! It’s not a sign of failure. Give yourself the time you need so you can set your future self up for success.

What you’re actually sending: the query package

Most agents ask for some combination of:

• Query letter (email or in a form)

• Sample pages (they’ll specify: first 10 pages, first 2 chapters, etc.)

• Synopsis (this varies, but it’s good to have one ready)

Most commonly, the materials will be pasted below your sign-off right in the body of the email, or pasted into a form if the agent uses Query Manager/Query Tracker.

Rarely—but not never—will the agent ask for the sample as an attachment. Only attach pages if they explicitly request it.

Always follow the agent’s guidelines. Everyone makes mistakes, but you don’t want to send the wrong materials in the wrong format. When they say “first X pages,” they mean start at the beginning—your prologue or ch 1. When they say “pasted” they literally mean just paste it in the email.

Learn from my mistakes tip #1: Save separate drafts in your email and individual Word docs with all the permutations you’re likely to need: your first 10 pages, your first 50 pages, the synopsis, the bulk of your query, etc. Then you just need to copy and paste what’s right there, instead of hunting each time for the material you need.

Learn from my mistakes tip #2: put in the agent’s email LAST, when your email is ready to go. That way you don’t risk hitting send too soon.

More on the synopsis.

More here and here on the nuts and bolts of what agents ask for.

The Query Letter Template

This is for fiction. Nonfiction usually needs a proposal; memoir is its own hybrid beast.

Aim for 300-500 words total. The pitch/blurb is the largest chunk and should be around 200-250, and shorter is often better.

1. Salutation

   Dear [Agent Name],

2. Metadata + comps + quick hook

   I’m querying you with TITLE (X,000 words), a [genre/subgenre] that will appeal to fans of COMP 1 and COMP 2. [Optional: one sentence about why you chose this agent/fit.]

   If you personalize, make it real and brief. “I’m querying you because…” is enough. If you have a hooky sentence, make sure it adds something and isn’t just repeating your blurb. Otherwise, jump straight to the pitch.

3. The pitch paragraph(s): who + what changes + what’s at stake

   Paragraph 1: introduce the protagonist + starting situation + inciting incident.

   Paragraph 2: escalation + the choice/problem that tightens + what happens if they fail.

   The query isn’t a synopsis. You’re usually walking the agent through the first third to midpoint and ending with an implied “oh no” question: what happens next?

4. Bio

   I’m a [short, relevant line]. [One additional sentence on credentials/publications if you have them; if not, keep it simple.]

5. Pages + closing

   Per your guidelines, I’ve included the first [X] pages below. Thank you for your consideration.

   Best,

   [Your Name]

The fine print:

This template is meant to be helpful, not constraining. Your comps and personalization can come after the pitch. Your blurb can be 2 paragraphs or 3. You can have 3 comps. You can sign off “Warmly” or “Cheers.” That doesn’t make a difference. The important thing is to understand that a query is its own genre of writing, with a few key jobs:

• be professional and easy to parse

• make the story legible (character + conflict + stakes)

• make the agent want to read the pages

If you struggle to articulate what your character does or wants, these problems often exist in the manuscript, too. A query doesn’t have to show everything that happens, but it can’t capture a book that doesn’t have a clear narrative engine.

More on: queries | comps | metadata | personalization | blurbs.

What makes an agent (or anyone) keep reading—and what makes them stop

Enthusiasm for a manuscript comes from:

• a clear protagonist in a concrete situation

• an inciting incident that actually changes things

• escalating pressure (choices, consequences, deadlines, danger, emotional stakes)

• specificity (not vague themes)

• voice (the query should feel like the book)

Common query problems:

• too many names and subplots (gets muddy and hard to follow)

• too much theme, not enough story (“a meditation on…”)

• unclear stakes (why does any of this matter?)

• too much backstory

• editorializing (“heartwarming,” “riveting,” “unputdownable,” “the next big thing”). Show those qualities and let the reader feel them.

Two useful mantras I learned from editors and now always repeat to myself: character + conflict = story and GMC (goal, motivation, conflict). Themes and vibes aren’t a plot. Tell the agent what happens.

Strategy

This is my recommended approach:

1. Make a list of agents who are a real fit.

2. Create a spreadsheet to keep track of everything you need. I used good old fashioned Excel. Some people prefer QueryTracker. I find it to be information overload—checking to see what everyone else is doing has zero impact on your personal querying journey. If the site works for you, great. If it makes you anxious, it’s 100% okay to skip it.

3. Query in small-ish batches. I like 10-20, although I know those numbers have changed as agents are even slower to reply.

4. Watch what happens:

   1. If you get zero requests out of 25 or so queries…your query/pages might need revision.

   2. If you get some requests... keep going, your materials are landing.

   3. If you get personalized rejections… treat them like free information. Don’t change your whole book because one agent didn’t connect, but pay attention if a pattern emerges that feels actionable and in line with your goals.

Querying is a numbers game. You have to send out enough to give yourself a real chance, but you also want to target agents you actually want to work with, and learn and adjust as needed.

See: How to find and keep track of agents.

Two reminders

1. You don’t pay an agent.

   Agents take a commission (industry standard is 15%) from the money you earn. If someone asks you to pay them to “consider” or “submit” your work, run.

2. No one query letter gets you published.

   A query gets you read. The manuscript gets you signed. Then the submission package gets you sold. One step at a time. (And every stage involves rejection, so learning how to cope with it early is really, really important.)

   If this helped, share it with the writing group chat.

   Share

From the mailbag (query-adjacent questions)

I got a bunch of questions in my inbox that feel like they belong together here, so let’s do a quick q&a lightning round. Thanks to everyone for writing in!

“When is it too early to start querying? My novel is with beta readers.”

If your novel is with beta readers, that should mean you’re open to making changes—potentially major ones. So definitely wait! A lot of people query while the book is “basically done” and then revise substantially—at which point you’ve used up your best agent list with materials that weren’t ready.

Everyone is nervous to send out their work, so nerves aren’t a good litmus test. It comes down to whether you think the manuscript still needs work. If this isn’t the draft you want an agent to read, don’t start querying.

Also, for all the waiting in this industry, agents sometimes reply fast. (I once got a request in 10 minutes.) As you revise, you might change your opening pages substantially. So, again, better to query when the work reflects your best, most polished version.

For more, see “Is Your Book Ready?”

“How do I figure out whether my thrillerish historical fiction is literary fiction or something else?”

This is so common, and I’ve described Greenwich as “thrillerish” too haha. Genre labels are about where the book sits on the shelf and which agents know how to sell it. If the engine is plot-first, tension-first, question first (“what’s going to happen?”), you’re likely in thriller/mystery/suspense territory. If the engine is driven by character/voice/psychology, you may be closer to literary. But since your main genre is historical fiction, I suspect you can just call it historical fiction in the query and the rest of the pitch should reflect the thrillerish stakes and the literary writing.

What are your comps, and how are they marketed? That will often tell you what lane you’re in. Genre blending is definitely having a moment, so I don’t think you’re in trouble here. You want to look at agents who rep historical fiction, and from there you can also look at upmarket as a potential category that blends the writing of lit fic with the plotting, pacing, and tension of a more commercial thriller.

“Can you start your book with the antagonist and introduce the protagonist on page 4?”

Sure! You can do just about anything if it works!

The real question is whether you’re giving the reader someone interesting to attach to quickly. If your opening pages create tension, clarity, and curiosity, and the protagonist arrives with a strong entrance *that makes sense for the story* you’re in great shape. If those first 4 pages are filler and the book doesn’t actually start until the protagonist arrives, that’s when you’d need to rethink.

One of my favorite examples of this is David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which starts with a prologue in a different location, different time period, and with a completely different character than Chapter 1—and it works phenomenally well. That opening scene hangs over the entire book, adding tension that would otherwise be absent.

If you open away from the protagonist, you want to make sure the opening still clearly sets up the story’s central problem. Don’t make us wait 50 pages to meet the person whose story this really is, or introduce a set of problems that don’t come to bear on the rest of the book.

What’s coming next

I’m holding onto a couple of bigger questions for their own posts: edits (and when you can say no), chronic illness + publishing expectations, querying after self-publishing, self-pub marketing beyond Amazon, and a contracts/royalties q.

If you have a question you want me to answer, about craft or publishing, keep sending them. I’m working through the queue and really appreciate hearing from you. And if you want to support this newsletter, your $5/month or $50/year helps me answer more questions, build more templates, and keep the archive free for writers who can’t swing another expense. Thank you!

Keep writing, and keep sending out your work!

Kate

Read more about Greenwich here. (People Best New Book • Vanity Fair Selection • BookBub Best New Fiction • Amazon Editor’s Pick)

• Interviews: Chicago Review of Books • Totally Booked • The Long Road to Publishing • Read with Jul

• Essays: Electric Literature • LitHub • A Refuge from Censorship Part II: Substack.

• Short work: “Exene” (Bellevue Literary Review) • “Lipstick” (The Baltimore Review) • “Word of Mouth” (The Brooklyn Review) • “Care and Feeding” (The Rumpus) • “Good Dead Girls” (No Tokens)

• My debut novel Greenwich is now available wherever books are sold! People Magazine named it a Best New Book, and it’s a Vanity Fair selection, a BookBub pick for Best New Fiction, and an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best New Literature and Fiction. Read more and grab your copy here!

• Sara Maurer interviewed me in the Chicago Review of Books: “Because What in Life is Ever Clear-Cut: An Interview with Kate Broad about Greenwich.” Lacey Dunham interviewed me about Greenwich on her Substack, “Marginalia.”

• I wrote an article for Electric Literature: “8 Novels about Class and Racial Tensions in the Suburbs.” I wrote an article for LitHub: “A Refuge From Censorship: Why Independent Bookstores Will Save Us” Part I and my follow up on Substack: “A Refuge From Censorship: Part II.”

• “Lipstick” is out in The Baltimore Review. “Word of Mouth” is out in The Brooklyn Review. “Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus. “Good Dead Girls” is out in No Tokens.

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Dear Kate,

Hi, I’m starting the querying process and have a few things I need clarified and was wondering if you could help.

1. When giving my sample pages, do I include my cover page e.g. the page with the title, my email, name, phone number etc and if I do does this page count as page 1 when they ask for, let’s say, the first 50 pages. I’m assuming not, but I want to be thorough.

2. My other question is about when agents ask for the sample pages in a word document or PDF. Which is better? And what should they be titled? Should a word document with my sample pages include my name as well or just the current name of the story itself? These questions may seem basic but I’m new to this and don’t want to be dismissed over any small errors. The same goes for a synopsis, can this be copy and pasted if the agent doesn’t specify how they want it?

Thanks, M

Dear M,

No such thing as a too basic question! We’re all starting somewhere, and this process can be overwhelming when there are so many instructions to follow. I’m going to go through your questions one by one, and at the end of this post I have some additional resources about formatting queries, and about unpacking some of the concerns around what happens if things aren’t totally, perfectly, on-the-nose “right” in a query or manuscript pages.

Sample pages:

If they ask for the material pasted in the email, start with the first page of your story and paste it in. No need to include the cover page info because the title, your name and email, etc., are all right there in the email. So your email will look something like this:

from: your email

to: agent’s email

Subject line: Query: MY BOOK TITLE

Dear Agent, ← put the agent’s name

Brilliant query letter here. ← put your query letter.

Below please find the first X pages. Thank you for your consideration. ← a simple sign off saying what you’re including, depending on what they asked for.

Best,

M

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away… ← this is where you paste your sample pages.

If they ask for the pages as an attachment:

1. If they say either Word or PDF, it truly doesn’t matter which one. If you’re having analysis paralysis, just send a Word doc because you’ll already have one ready to go, since that’s what you’ll send the most often.

   Use Times New Roman font, 12 point, double spaced, 1 inch margins for your manuscript. Use page breaks when you have a chapter break.

   I’ve started to see a trend where people type their manuscripts like the way a Substack post is formatted, with a space between paragraphs and no indentations. But publishing still follows formatting like a printed book, with an indentation to start each new paragraph and no additional spaces in between paragraphs. Don’t press tab to indent, though!! This makes things harder for the publisher down the line. Use the ruler in Word to move the curser in a half inch. Once you do this for one paragraph, when you hit return the next paragraph will automatically start right where you want it.

2. The agent is referring to manuscript pages when they ask for X number of pages. So you don’t have to include a cover page as counting toward your page count.

   You can begin your document with a cover letter on the first page, and then start your manuscript on p. 2. Or you can adjust the spacing so the cover letter isn’t a full page, and then include your query letter again on p. 1 so it’s all there as a refresher for the agent when they open your doc. For example:

   Your Name

   Address

   Email

   Phone number

   BOOK TITLE + word count

   The blurb/summary from your query

   <page break>

   Chapter One

3. Title your document First Name Last Name_YOUR BOOK TITLE_the number of pages included. For example:

   Kate Broad_GREENWICH_first 10

   Kate Broad_GREENWICH_first 50

   Kate Broad_GREENWICH_first 3 ch

   (you get the idea)

The synopsis:

If the agent doesn’t specify that they want it as an attachment, you can just paste it in the email along with the sample pages. When querying I usually pasted the synopsis first and then the sample pages, unless the agent specified otherwise. But either way is okay. After your sign off, just say SYNOPSIS and then paste the synopsis, and then CHAPTER ONE (or PROLOGUE — wherever your book starts) and paste away.

If they ask for the synopsis as an attachment:

1. Title it: First Name Last Name_BOOK TITLE_Synopsis, or follow whatever your naming convention is for your materials. The details don’t matter so much as not just calling it “synopsis.doc” because that obviously makes things harder for the agent, since they have other materials to read beside yours. It doesn’t mean they’ll automatically reject you, but you want to make things as easy as possible on their end!

2. You don’t need to include a full cover letter, but at the top of the page or in a header it should have your name, the book title, and identify that this is a synopsis.

I totally get wanting to make sure you’re doing everything right. There’s so much pressure on querying, and people like me are always emphasizing that you need to follow the agent’s instructions and you only get one chance to get their attention, etc.

But that means don’t be the person who queries your YA fantasy to someone who only represents adult literary fiction. Don’t send 100 pages when the agent asks for 10. Don’t tell the agent you’re including the whole manuscript and they’ll be sorry if they don’t sign you.

It doesn’t mean that if you title your Word doc with your initials instead of your full name, you’re going to be rejected. Or if you call it “Title_sample pages” and don’t include your name at all, you’re going to be rejected. It really, truly, 100% doesn’t matter, and it isn’t going to be the thing that makes or breaks you. I’ve given you a template here because sometimes it feels better to be given a set of instructions you can follow, you know? But I’m not saying DO IT THIS WAY OR ELSE.

Agents aren’t looking for excuses not to read your work. They aren’t going to say, “Gee, I LOVED these sample pages but the author had one typo so into the trash it goes.” There’s a level at which work can look sloppy and unprofessional—if it’s riddled with errors or in Comic Sans size 14 font. But you won’t be dismissed over truly small things. If they ask for 50 pages and you send 51, you’re fine. An agent won’t go from a yes to a no because of that. Likewise, no amount of perfect formatting will turn a no into a yes, no matter how much we might wish our sheer perfection will tip them over the edge.

And if an agent really does decide they won’t sign you because you did/didn’t include a cover letter and they didn’t/did want one, but never told you that they wanted one, do you really want to work with them anyway???

Here’s another post about what agents ask for, and how to format and paste in your work:

And a post unpacking some of what’s behind the fear of an automatic dismissal, and other ways we can approach thinking about our work:

Good luck!!

Kate

• My debut novel Greenwich is now available wherever books are sold! People Magazine named it a Best New Book, and it’s a Vanity Fair selection, a BookBub pick for Best New Fiction, and an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best New Literature and Fiction. Read more and grab your copy here!

• Sara Maurer interviewed me in the Chicago Review of Books: “Because What in Life is Ever Clear-Cut: An Interview with Kate Broad about Greenwich.” Lacey Dunham interviewed me about Greenwich on her Substack, “Marginalia.”

• I wrote an article for Electric Literature: “8 Novels about Class and Racial Tensions in the Suburbs.” I wrote an article for LitHub: “A Refuge From Censorship: Why Independent Bookstores Will Save Us” Part I and my follow up on Substack: “A Refuge From Censorship: Part II.”

• “Lipstick” is out in The Baltimore Review. “Word of Mouth” is out in The Brooklyn Review. [Link is now live!]. “Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus. “Good Dead Girls” is out in No Tokens.

Upcoming Events:

• Brooklyn Book Festival: “The New Kids: 2025 Debut Authors Talk Process, Publishing, and Community.” Monday September 22, 7pm at Heart of Gold in Astoria, Queens.

• Bellevue Literary Review: Tuesday Oct 23, 7pm ET online reading to celebrate the release of BLR’s Issue 49: a theme issue on “Animalia.” Link forthcoming.

• Barnes and Noble meet and greet and book signings:

  • Sat. Sept 27, 1pm: Mt. Kisco, NY

  • Sat. Oct 18, 1pm: Whitehall, PA

  • Sat. Nov 22, 2pm: Providence, RI

  • Sun., Nov 23, 2pm: Warwick, RI

  ---

Recently at the launch for The Baltimore Review’s Summer 2025 issue, I was talking with some writers who are finishing books and wondering what comes next. We discussed how confusing it is to get started—there’s so much information out there, it’s hard to know what to sift through or where to begin.

I have lots info and resources in the archives: go to the On Querying section for queries, and On Publishing for broader publishing discussions. But I don’t have a primer on where to begin. So here it is!

Step 1: Querying Agents

If you dream of seeing your book on bookshelves, you don’t send your book directly to publishers. Literary agents act as a go-between, connecting editors and authors. You have to get an agent first, and they’re the ones who’ll submit your work to the editor.

To get an agent, you have to query them. This is the term used for sending a cover letter, called the query, and a few sample pages out to agents. If an agent wants to read more, they’ll write back and let you know.

I can’t sugar-coat this: querying sucks. It’s hard to know which is worse: getting form rejections, getting so-close-but-not-quite rejections, or getting total silence and ghosting. All of it is bad!!! But it’s the reality of traditional publishing with a medium to large publisher. Everyone gets rejected. The sooner you can depersonalize that and move on, the better positioned you’ll be to persevere and finally get the yes you need.

What an Agent Actually Does (and Doesn’t Do)

Agents are gatekeepers, yes, because you can’t get to a (bigger) (traditional) publisher without them (more on other publishing paths below). But they’re also your business partner and your #1 advocate. Their main job is to sell your book to publishers and negotiate the best deal possible. They’ll often provide editorial feedback, help shape your career path, and be your first line of defense when it comes to contracts and rights. An agent will go to bat for you and will answer all the questions you’re worried are too silly or embarrassing to ask.

Agents take a 15% commission of your advance and royalties; usually the publisher pays the agency and then the agency takes their cut and pays you the rest. A good agent does SO much work for the author and deserves every penny and more.

What they don’t do: fix an unfinished or unpolished manuscript, guarantee you a book deal, or act as your therapist or your best friend. They aren’t fairy godparents waving publishing wands, and they don’t have a crystal ball. They’re professionals looking for books they believe they can sell, but they can’t make any promises.

The Query Letter: Short, Professional, About the Book

In order to get an agent to represent your work – and then send it to a publisher – you start by querying them. Lots more about query letters in the archives:

Each agent has different requirements, so read their submission guidelines carefully to make sure you’re sending what they want. If they want to read more, they’ll ask for a partial (some number of pages that they’ll specify in their request) or a full (the full manuscript).

Getting a request is great. It’s not, however, an offer of representation. It’s like getting an interview. You’re one step closer—but you still don’t have the job. If an agent reads your full and wants to work with you, you’ll hop on the phone or a video call in order to chat and see if you’re a good fit. If not, they’ll let you know that they’ve passed on your query, it’s possible you won’t hear back at all. Ghosting is less likely on a full, but it does happen and, as with all of this, it’s best to be prepared.

There are lots of resources here and online about the query letter. Think one page, three parts:

1. Metadata. A sentence or two that gives the title, genre, wordcount, comparison titles, and can include a short hook that gets at the core of your story.

2. The Pitch. A concise 1-2 paragraphs describing the protagonist, the conflict, and what’s at stake.

3. The Bio. Anything relevant to your writing (publications, experience, platform).

No gimmicks. No apologizing. No “this will be the next Big Thing.” Agents are inundated with queries, and clarity and professionalism stand out more than cleverness. The biggest problems I see in queries are too much info—getting bogged down in unimportant minutia—or too little info, where the story feels vague and confusing. Give yourself plenty of time to work on this, and be patient as you revise.

Surviving the Query Trenches

Do your homework. Use Manuscript Wishlist, Publishers Marketplace, agency websites, and Query Tracker to figure out which agents represent your genre. Tailoring your queries (“I’m querying you because you represent X”) is always a useful addition.

And then, get ready to wait. Most books rack up dozens, even hundreds of passes. The only guarantee is that if you quit, your book won’t get picked up at all.

You have to be honest with yourself and take a hard look at your work through the eyes of an industry professional. Does anything in your query, opening pages, or the manuscript need more work? Are you sure your book is ready for an agent? This doesn’t mean beat yourself up and scream to yourself in the most negative voice that you have. I just mean to stay clear-eyed about where you are in your journey. Many people query too soon, and many first books don’t get picked up. At the same time, you have to believe in yourself and give yourself a fair chance to succeed.

I recommend using a spreadsheet to keep track of everyone you’ve queried, what you’ve sent, and their response, with dates. I also recommend that while you’re querying, you start writing something else. It will keep you engaged and give you something new to fall in love with.

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Other Genres

I’ve focused here on querying agents in order to get a novel published, but the journey is a bit different for nonfiction. Nonfiction often sells based on a proposal, an outline, and a few sample chapters, instead of a finished manuscript. You’re going through the same steps, but at a different stage in the writing process.

Memoir is somewhere in between, depending on what type of story you’re telling. Memoir that’s more novelistic tends to sell the way a novel does, where an agent wants to see the full manuscript before signing on.

Other Paths

You need an agent if you’re going to try for bigger publishers. These are the “Big 5” publishers—Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Simon and Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins—and all of their imprints, or subdivisions. This is also the case for bigger independent presses, like Scholastic, Grove, Sourcebooks, etc. They aren’t owned by the Big 5, but they usually don’t take unagented submissions.

But these aren’t the only publishers that exist. There are also smaller independent presses, many of which take unagented submissions, meaning authors can submit their manuscript directly. University presses also publish great work and don’t require an agent.

Self-publishing is another path that doesn’t require any querying or submissions at all. You become your own publisher, meaning you take on/find professionals to hire for all the rounds of editing, copyediting, and proofreading, and you handle the cover design, production, marketing, publicity, distribution, and audience building. You’re responsible for all the upfront costs, but you have full creative control and don’t have to share the profits with the publisher or an agency.

There’s no path that’s “right” or “wrong” or better or worse than another. It all comes down to your book and your goals.

No matter what stage you at or what path you’re considering, let me know if you have any questions, and keep writing!

Kate

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Thank you all so, so much for your kind words and your support with the publication of Greenwich!!!!!!! It’s been a whirlwind — and so much fun — but I’m also excited to get back into the swing of things and into answering your questions again!

I’m going to answer this one in two parts, to make sure I have the space to get to it all. Part I is below, and I’ll link to Part II here once it’s posted.

But first, some news!

• My debut novel Greenwich is now available wherever books are sold! It’s an Amazon Editor’s Pick, a Vanity Fair Summer Read, and a People Magazine Best New Book. Read more and grab your copy here.

• Read my interview in the Chicago Review of Books: “Because What in Life is Ever Clear-Cut: An Interview with Kate Broad about Greenwich.”

• Read my article in Electric Literature: “8 Novels about Class and Racial Tensions in the Suburbs.”

• Read my article in LitHub: “A Refuge From Censorship: Why Independent Bookstores Will Save Us” Part I and my follow up on Substack: “A Refuge From Censorship: Part II.”

• “Lipstick” is out in The Baltimore Review.

• “Word of Mouth” is out in The Brooklyn Review.

• “Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus.

• “Good Dead Girls” is out in No Tokens.

Dear Kate,

Hello! In a nutshell, I'm wondering if I should keep pushing for a traditional agent/publisher or if I should self-publish? I'm a news reporter with a successful podcast and have dreamed about being an author my entire life. I got my first novel completed, a female-led mystery. I really, really want an agent for the thrill of seeing my book at Target, and the opportunity for major book clubs, reviews, etc. I spent a year querying about 50 agents and got several manuscript requests, but nothing beyond that. While I was querying, I wrote two other books in the same genre so I'd have several to push onto Amazon if I had to self-publish, and now I'm on the precipice ... Should I pull the trigger or keep querying?

If you had to start self-publishing over again where would you put your energy to get sales? And, does it hurt with agents that you self-published if you try to pitch a later book?

- Christy

Dear Christy,

The very first question I ever got at Ask an Author was about whether to stop querying a manuscript and consider self publishing instead. I think the questions I ask in it and the overall things to consider when making this decision still stand:

Traditional publishing (agent —> publisher) and self-publishing (doing it yourself, usually through Amazon) are two totally different paths. The first question I’d ask right away is whether your genre, and your book in particular, is better suited to one path or the other.

1. What are some of the main comp titles for your novel? Not just for your query, but if you were telling people about the book and wanted to get them interested. (“Oh, you liked X? You’ll love my novel!”) Keep these recent, published in the last 10 years max. Earlier than that and the publishing landscape just doesn’t apply.

2. What are some of your favorite books that were published in the last 10 years, whether they’re comps or not? What do you like to read the most? Who are your favorite authors writing and publishing today?

3. Now look at the lists you’ve generated. Who published those books?

If your comp titles are all or mostly trad published books, and you’re primarily or exclusively reading trad published books, that tells you something about what you like and what world you want your writing to be part of. Same if you’re mostly reading and excited about self-pubbed books.

Obviously it might not be as clear cut as I’m making it out here, but if you rarely read self-published novels, are you sure you want to join that ecosystem? Conversely, if you rarely read trad published novels, then why is a trad publisher is going to be the right partner to bring your words into the world?

Getting more into your querying journey thus far…

Did you get any feedback on your manuscript requests? Anything that gave you a sense of how agents were responding to your work? Did anything in that feedback resonate with you? If you got a solid handful of full requests (say, more than just 1 or 2 out of 50), I’d take that to mean your query and opening pages are engaging agents, so the next step is to consider whether something in your manuscript itself isn’t where it needs to be yet, or if you just haven’t found the right match and need to keep searching. One possibility is to continue querying and wait until you’ve truly exhausted your options before you make a decision — as long as there are more agents left on your list who you think might be a good fit.

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Now that you’ve written two more manuscripts after this first one—do you think your writing has changed since you wrote your first book? Is your prose sharper, your stakes higher, your tension more alive on the page? You said these new books are in the same genre, but I’m assuming they aren’t sequels. In that case, what about querying another manuscript, whichever one has been revised the most and that you think is the strongest? You can go back and query agents with a new manuscript and see if you have better luck with a new project. If the agent requested materials from you before, definitely mention that in your letter. If they sent you a form rejection or never responded, I don’t think you have to say in your query that this is your second time querying them.

(Note that I’d only query them again if it’s been some time — like a year or close to it— since you queried your first project, so the turnaround doesn’t seem too rushed to them.) [Edit: I was up in the night thinking about this, as one does, and I think that’s too long to put your career on hold. A few months seems more reasonable. My point is just that if you get a pass and then turn around and immediately query the same agent with a different manuscript, I could see how that might seem spammy on their end.]

Facts: Many if not most authors whose debuts you see on shelves are not actually selling the first novel they wrote or completed, or anywhere close to that. The first novel is often not the one that gets an agent. The first that gets an agent isn’t necessarily the one that sells. (All of this was true for me.)

If your dream is to be traditionally published, I think your first completed manuscript is too soon to give up on that dream. Give yourself time—real time—to write, revise, and query. Keep querying your current manuscript, or start querying something newer. Keep really working on your prose. Read deeply and widely and see how other authors do what they’re doing. Make sure you have tension and stakes (so many books don’t have tension or stakes!).

There are many things that we as authors want but don’t get (and that our agents, editors, publicists, and marketers also want for us and are just as disappointed by). If you want a shot at things like Target placement, major book clubs, or national press, it’s more likely to happen if you’re traditionally published, which means starting by getting an agent. That “more likely” is still infintessimally small, though. I don’t say this to be a dream killer!!!!! Someone’s books wind up on Target shelves, so why not yours?!? I truly believe we as authors have every right to dream big and strive to make it happen. I just want to be clear that the majority of authors with agents and trad book deals don’t get those placements. Many other wonderful things happen, some of which might be things you never even dreamed of, but so much of publishing is beyond the author’s control (pretty much anything that’s not the writing itself). You want to give yourself a chance to meet all of your dreams and goals, but also recognize what might still be a long shot, and what other ways you might measure success.

Self publishing isn’t a backup plan if trad publishing doesn’t work out. It isn’t a lesser path. Many self published authors make significantly more money and sell many more copies than trad pub, if those are your goals. But it’s different. In self-publishing, you act as your own publisher. You’re doing all of the art and design, the marketing and publicity, and the distribution. You have complete creative control. You also have full responsibility. You’re on the hook for any upfront costs (editing, copyediting, proofreading, cover design, formatting) but you also get a larger cut of earnings because you aren’t sharing it with an agent or a corporation.

Trad publishers work to get your book into bookstores and on shelves, whereas self-publishing primarily works through Amazon. Some stores have consignment options for local options; other bookstores won’t work with Amazon at all. Self-pubbed authors are reaching their readers more online and building up a fan base that way. There can be crossover, with publishers sometimes picking up self-pubbed novels that have done extremely well. But like being an Oprah pick, it’s not something to automatically assume is going to happen.

It’s worth thinking about what you want from your writing, and from your publishing experience. If you want the perks (and frustrations) that come with trad publishing, I think it’s important not to give up too soon. If you want the perks (and frustrations) of self publishing, then there’s no reason not to go that route with the three books you have ready to go.

One other thing to factor into your thinking is that it will take MUCH longer for these books to be published on the trad pub side. First you have to sign with the agent, then probably revise, then spend months if not a year or more on submission to editors, then more revising with an editor, and it’s often 18 months to two years from book deal to publication day. Your subsequent books might be placed one to two years apart, depending on how the publisher wants to time it. There’s also no guarantee that getting an agent will also get you a publisher, or that the publisher who takes your first book will want another from you. If all that makes your skin crawl, you might enjoy the faster pace and control of self-publishing. If you want the bookstore placements that come with a traditional publisher, putting up with the slower timeline is part of what makes those placements possible, because a TON of work happens on the front end before the book comes out.

Again, it also comes down to where your readers are, how you want to reach them, and what kind of dreams you have for this book and your future projects.

I’m going to save the last two questions for the next post because I want to do some more research into self-publishing resources. But I hope I’ve given you some things to think about, even if there are no clear answers. No matter what path you choose, the most important part is always the writing — making the strongest book that you can, that’s true to your vision and the story you most want to tell.

Keep writing!

Kate

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News!

• My debut novel Greenwich will be out July 22! Adrienne Brodeur called it “A stunning debut…Fast-paced, beautifully written, vividly peopled… impossible to put down.” Greenwich is one of Publisher’s Weekly’s “buzz books” for summer 2025, and on Zibby Owens’s list of most anticipated new releases this year. Hit that preorder button!

• “Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus

• “Good Dead Girls” is out in No Tokens

• And two more pieces are forthcoming — a short story in The Booklyn Review, and an essay in The Bellevue Literary Review.

Hi Kate,

Two things related to queries: Are submissions these days obliged to list comps? And is it still valuable to give a reason why my query is going to a particular agent (other than if there was a direct contact at an event)? That seems a dated practice and seldom convinces the agent that I (the author) did any focused research, other than determine I’m sending a query to an active agent who works in my genre.

- Tomm G

Dear Tomm G,

I haven’t heard anything to suggest that either of these practices are dated. If you have other info to show a meaningful shift is underway, let me know! (I don’t mean one agent posting online that they don’t need comps; I mean something that suggests a broader trend for authors to follow.)

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I still think comps are a powerful tool that querying authors have at their disposal. Agents get tens if not hundreds of queries a week, sometimes thousands a year. That’s a LOT of queries to wade through. And reading queries isn’t the bulk of their job — most of their time has to go to reading, editing, pitching, and negotiating for their existing clients. Comp titles do quick work to signal a) that you’re a working professional who knows your field and b) what your book is like and what readers it might appeal to. You aren’t obligated to include this — you aren’t obligated to do anything! Really! But when other authors are including comps (and I promise that they are), I’m not sure why you’d want to leave yours off. You’ve put a lot of time into your manuscript, so you might as well send a query that’s as strong and compelling as you can make it.

Some agents want queries via email and don’t necessarily specify what they want you to include. But a growing number of agents use forms on Query Manager to manage their submissions. Agents who use form submissions can specify what fields they want querying authors to fill out, and while not every agent will include a separate field for comp titles, it’s a common sight. Don’t leave that field blank! You can’t just opt out of something the agent has specifically asked for, ya know? It’s going to tell the agent that you haven’t done your homework, don’t know the field you’re writing in, don’t know what books your book is in conversation with, don’t want to be part of the conversation, or all of the above. :(

If and when you do get an agent, you’ll need comps to pitch to editors. If and when your book gets picked up, you’ll need comps that sales will use. These comps can and will evolve, and it will be a conversation as your agent and editor discuss where they see your book in the marketplace — it won’t be all on you to come up with the best titles. But it’s your book, so you’ll want to have a say! My point is that even once you clear this hurdle, the need for comps isn’t going away. The more immersed you can be in your genre and the more adept at speaking about other titles your book meshes with, the better off you’ll be for the long life of your novel’s trajectory and your future writing career.

Personalization feels a little fuzzier, and if you really don’t have anything to say, this is something you can leave off. But as with comps, not including this means not taking advantage of another opportunity you could have used to your advantage. When you find an agent to query, presumably you did some amount of research to warrant including them on your list, beyond “is alive” and “accepts queries.” The fact that you’re querying them in the first place means you should already know something about them — that they represented a similar title that you love, or their MSWL includes other books in your genre, or they specifically said something in their bio or their wish list that made you take notice. Once you’ve already done that research for yourself, why not take the two extra minutes to include it in your query? I know that two minutes times however many queries you wind up sending does add up, but everything in writing and in publishing takes time and work. Don’t shortchange yourself at this stage — or at any step along the way.

So many writers dash off queries without doing even the most basic research that you’re talking about, so I actually do think that showing you read an agent’s bio or saw something specific in their wishlist can set you apart from the pack. If all you’d have to say is “I’m querying you because you accept cozy mysteries and I’m writing a cozy mystery” then yeah… that isn’t going to do much for you and you can leave it off. You don’t need a throwaway line, and you also don’t need to overdo it — the blurb is still the most important part. But if you can say, “I read in your MSWL that you’re looking for cozy mysteries about baking and I hope my manuscript, THE SECRET’S IN THE SAUCE, may be of interest” then you’re making a convincing case for them to read on. (I just made that up on the spot but I hope it’s a real book, and if not someone please write it!)

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You can 100% send out a query with no comps and no personalization and see what happens. You might get a full request! Just like you might include comps and a great personalization note and still get a form rejection or no response. Great comps alone will not make an agent request, especially if the opening pages don’t grab them. An agent won’t take a manuscript they were otherwise interested and decide not to request it because you didn’t personalize the query. It’s not that these components are make or break, but that they’re part of the overall package you’re using to pitch yourself. As you’re transitioning from the writing side of things (making art) to the publishing side (selling a product), you want to show agents that you’re a working professional who can meet industry expectations. There will always be someone who bucked the trend and still got the desired result. But querying is an uphill climb, and my thinking continues to be that you’re better off not making things even harder for yourself by going against what are still the norms.

Good luck, and keep writing!

Kate

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News!

• My debut novel Greenwich will be out in July! Adrienne Brodeur called it “A stunning debut…Fast-paced, beautifully written, vividly peopled… impossible to put down.” Greenwich is one of Publisher’s Weekly’s “buzz books” for summer 2025, and on Zibby Owens’s list of most anticipated new releases this year. Hit that preorder button!

• “Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus

• “Good Dead Girls,” is out in No Tokens

• And two more pieces are forthcoming! A short story in The Booklyn Review, and an essay in The Bellevue Review. Can’t wait to share more!

  ---

That last post on blurbs and query letters led to a several more questions that I’ll go through below. A reminder that you can search for “query” or “comps” or “synopsis” (or whatever you’re looking for) in the archives and see if it’s been addressed, and then reach out if you still have a question or if what you read there sparked another idea. Nothing in the archives is paywalled — an extra thank you to the generous paid subscribers who let me keep it that way. <3

Dear Kate,

“For fiction, a synopsis of the novel (no more than two pages) and the opening 50 pages of the manuscript – usually the first three chapters" - my first three chapters only equate to 25 pages - what do I send?

- Kay

Dear Kay,

If an agent asks you to send “the opening 50 pages,” send the opening 50 pages. The “usually” in those directions is a ballpark, but since they specifically say 50 pages, that’s the part I’d follow.

Some people’s first 3 chapters might only be 3 pages. Some 3 chapters might be 100 pages. If the agent specifically wanted 3 chapters, they’d have asked for 3 chapters (and then I’d be telling you to send the three chapters). I don’t think you’re off in any way by sending however many chapters make up your first 50 p.

For more on what to send, see this post on “What Agents Ask For”:

Sounds like you’re in great shape and ready to start/keep querying — good luck!

Kate

This question was posted in the comments section of the last newsletter and I wanted to share it here, too:

This is perhaps a silly question, but how do agents define a "page," typically? Is there a standard number of words? I ask because a printed page in a book tends to be about two-thirds of an 8/5x11 page in Microsoft Word.

- Tom

My response:

Not silly! There’s no standard number (a page of short dialogue, for ex, will have fewer words than a long, dense paragraph) but you don’t have to worry about a manuscript page vs. a formatted book page. Format your manuscript in Word using standard one-inch margins, 12 point font, Times New Roman font. Then however many pages they ask for, go by wherever that falls in the Word document. If they ask for word count instead, then go by that instead of worrying about the number.

It’s all a bit of a ballpark, anyway, and agents know it’s not going to be exact. If they ask for 20 pages, say, and you have a chapter break in there that eats up a page, and some pages with fewer words, and so you wish you could really send 22 pages instead… those “lost” pages aren’t going to make a difference. If they love the book at 20 pages they won’t miss the extra words, and if they aren’t going to request the book after 20 page then they aren’t going to request it after 22 pages either.

If you have a tiny bit of text that goes over the page count but wraps up a chapter/scene, it’s okay to add that extra paragraph or so. Not a lot, so that it looks like you’re trying to sneak in more! (Again, that last page isn’t going to make the difference.) But you can finish the sentence even if it runs over.

[And as Tom notes in another comment, when you copy/paste your pages into the email, there are no page breaks anyway.]

Dear Kate,

I read your blurb for your novel Greenwich and it was helpful to walk through it line by line. This has made me wonder what details about my characters to include in my own query and whether I have, as you say, too much or too little. When you say that Rachel’s aunt is “oddly spacey” or her uncle is “consumed with business,” how did you pick those descriptors when probably there is other stuff about the characters that we learn in the book, too?

- Jean

Dear Jean,

I’m glad the analysis of the Greenwich blurb was helpful. [Click here for a recap and scroll down to the discussion of the blurb.] You’re right that there’s obviously more to the characters in the novel than the tidbits I provide in the blurb, but if you read the book (shameless plug, you can pre-order it now and it will be yours come July!) I think you’ll see that they’re pretty dominant traits. Aunt Ellen is oddly spacey — she’s not quite like Rachel remembers from her past visits, and it feels like something is up. Her uncle Laurent is barely around and spends all his time obsessed with a new real estate deal, which is putting pressure on the family. (But note that in the blurb I put “business” instead of specifying “real estate hedge fund,” because the latter is too specific for our needs here and would be distracting.) These characters and their issues play a central role in the plot as it unfolds, which is why they’re important. If I think of how I’d describe them to a friend — how I’d give my friend a sense of the characters without spoiling anything — those are the key pieces I’d choose.

Part of what works about them is that they not only show something concrete about the characters, but they also raise questions in the reader’s mind. Why is Ellen spacey? What’s so odd or unusual about it? What’s behind her behavior? What will Rachel find out? What will she do about it? And what’s up with Laurent’s work? Is Ellen’s spaciness connected to all the time that he’s spending “consumed” with business? How is that going to impact the accident that follows, and the ways this family changes as a result? What are the currents at work, and how is Rachel going to be swept up in these forces? We can tell immediately that Rachel isn’t having the summer she dreamed of — that “But” that starts the sentence “But her aunt is oddly spacey” is doing a lot of work, showing a pivotal turn from Rachel’s expectations to the reality she finds.

A reader might not be consciously thinking all these things at once, obviously. But there’s a sense of action and consequence—that something is at stake and is going to happen in this summer when all these personalities are brought together under pressure. The point is to describe the characters, but to do so in a way that also tells the story. You want to choose details that do essential work. (You always want to choose details that do essential work; writing a blurb isn’t a different writing exercise than writing a book, it’s just more compressed.)

In the blurb, as in the novel itself, these aren’t just random character traits developed to give a sense of depth and dimension to the people. They do that, of course, but they’re also showing something more. I don’t need to say in the blurb that Ellen has a polished French manicure and jewels on her rings. You’d have a picture of her, but so what? That wouldn’t tell you anything about what happens in the novel. Laurent is blustry and broad-shouldered and cue-ball bald but, again, that gives the reader a picture of him in the novel but we don’t need to know all that about him for the blurb. As you go through each part of your blurb, you can ask yourself what those words are giving to the reader. What are the layers of work that your details are doing to tell the reader what happens in your story? Really articulate to yourself why you’re including it — why you think it’s important. If it’s to show X, can you have something that shows X and also does Y? Can you make each word do another layer of work for you?

Another thing you can do is stuff your query with all the details you’re thinking might be important, and then start cutting them back and asking yourself what, if anything, you lose with each omission. If the reader’s fundamental understanding of the story doesn’t change, then you probably don’t need that particular detail. If the reader really needs to know something for the rest of the story to make sense, then bam — you’ve got yourself an essential element you need to include. The blurb still needs to feel alive, so if you get rid of absolutely everything, you risk winding up with something dull and anemic. But that’s where you zero in on what key details make the story feel dynamic and lively—like these are three-dimensional characters with depth and intrigue that we’re going to want to spend some time with—and that also do this double-duty of laying out what happens in the book.

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The great thing about a draft is that no one else has to see it, so you can write a lot of versions that practice tackling this in different ways. Write a version with a lot of detail. Write a version with all that detail stripped away. Change a word, change a sentence, and see how it impacts the whole meaning of your summary. At the same time, study other blurbs and back cover copy for your favorite novels and try to take them apart in this same way. What details are they including? Why do you think the author made that choice?

Keep writing, and good luck with your query!

Kate

Dear Kate,

I've written a book that would appeal to fans of Wiseguy and Casino (Mario Pelleggi). Mine is with a slight sense of humor. Based on fact and truth. It is the biggest and most successful scam ever in Las Vegas and no one has ever heard of it. Also about the entire life of a thief and his loves, how he got to where he was and how he ended up. I need help with comp titles. Sorry but I'm stuck in a place (now) where you can't get a decent loaf of Italian bread and no one I can refer you guys to. Also I'm broke and embarrassed.

- Robert

Dear Robert,

Check out this post on comps and scroll down to the bullet list of places to search:

I’d look for contemporary titles about Vegas, scams, heists, and thiefs. Your comps don’t need to be about those topics specifically, but can also be similar in terms of tone and voice. If your narrator is looking back on his life, you can look for a book that’s similarly retrospective. If there’s a sense of wit and humor, you can choose a comp that captures that quality. Remember that each comp doesn’t have to cover everything. You’re using these titles to give the agent a sense of where your book fits in the market and what other books it might sit with. Think about the books you like to read. Who do you want your work to be in conversation with? I think you’re thinking about Nicholas Pileggi, so a good starting point is to see who’s writing contemporary novels within the last 3-5 years that share similar qualities with his work.

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I can’t find individual comps for you, but the tools in the post, above, are all free and what I’d use to get started. You know your book better than anyone, and you know the community of other titles you want it to be a part of. If you get an agent and then a publisher, you’ll keep having this conversation about comps as your agent pitches it to an editor, an editor pitches it to a sales team, and a sales team pitches it to readers. (Literally my agent just emailed me yesterday to ask if I have ideas for comps for a new manuscript I’ve been working on.) If you self-publish it’s even more important to know your comps, because they share the audience you’ll want to reach. The process never ends, so it’s great to start to feel comfortable finding these books, reading widely in your genre, and developing a sense of where your work fits in — even as of course it has its own qualities that make it stand out.

Good luck, keep writing, and I hope you find some good bread or bake your own!

Kate

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News!

• My debut novel Greenwich will be out in July! Adrienne Brodeur called it “A stunning debut…Fast-paced, beautifully written, vividly peopled… impossible to put down.” Greenwich is one of Publisher’s Weekly’s “buzz books” for summer 2025, and on Zibby Owens’s list of most anticipated new releases this year. Hit that preorder button!

• “Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus

• “Good Dead Girls,” is out in No Tokens

Dear Kate,

What are the elements of a successful query letter? Can you share some examples?

- Alex

Dear Alex,

Check out this post from the archive to get started:

I went back through and reread this post, and I think it holds up. The elements of a query letter haven’t really changed. You want:

• Salutation

• Metadata: title, genre, word count, comparison titles

• short, hooky blurb that gets the agent interesting in reading more (see below for more info + an example)

• personalization (if you have something relevant about why you’re querying this agent in particular)

• short bio

• whatever pages the agent has asked to see, pasted below your letter

• ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE

All of these details are explained more in the link above. You can also read more about comparison titles here and then I answered some more follow-up questions about that post here.

You may also find this post about the nuts and bolts of querying + how to find agents useful.

I’m addressing fiction, which is what most subscribers are writing, but it’s similar-with-some-difference for nonfiction. For a novel: the blurb is by far the hardest (and the most important) part. It should introduce your main character(s), the inciting incident, and build the central conflict. It will often lead the reader through to about the midpoint, and then end in a way that gestures toward a broader conflict and resolution without giving the whole thing away. A synopsis states the ending; the query does not. The #1 issue I see in blurbs is both too much and too little information. Too much detail about stuff that doesn’t really matter for the HEART of the story, and too few of the components that really lay out the conflict and stakes. If you can’t get this down in the query, the odds are very, very, very high that there is an issue with the conflict and stakes in the manuscript itself.

Here’s the blurb for my forthcoming novel, GREENWICH. I was already agented when I wrote it so I didn’t technically use it in a query, but this is what I would have used as my pitch if I’d been trying to get an agent’s attention:

Summer, 1999. Rachel Fiske is almost eighteen when she arrives at her aunt and uncle’s mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her glamorous aunt is struggling to heal from an injury, and Rachel wants to help—and escape her own troubles back home. But her aunt is oddly spacey and her uncle is consumed with business, and Rachel feels lonely and adrift, excluded from the world of adults and their secrets. The only bright spot is Claudia, a recent college graduate, aspiring artist, and the live-in babysitter for Rachel’s cousin. As summer deepens, Rachel eagerly hopes their friendship might grow into more.

But when a tragic accident occurs, the family turns on Claudia in a desperate bid to salvage their reputation. Caught between her upbringing and her feelings for Claudia, her desire to do the right thing and to protect her future, Rachel must make a pivotal choice. She’s the only one who knows what really happened—and her decision has consequences far beyond what she could have predicted.

The first paragraph leads us basically through the first half of the book. We get the main character, Rachel, and the inciting incident that sets the story in motion: she goes to her aunt and uncle’s in CT. There are reasons for this trip that are detailed in the novel, but we don’t need them here — we just need to get Rachel to Greenwich and out of her usual life.

Then comes the rising action, as the story starts to build: we’re introduced to the other characters in the house and get a sense that things aren’t as they seem. There’s going to be family secrets and increasing tension as truths about these characters come to light. Again, I don’t need to show everything that happens scene by scene. The goal is to distill those pages into a few lines that give a sense of the overarching story.

Next, a pivotal moment comes in introducing Claudia, who immediately stands out as the only other named character in the blurb. She’s clearly important. The novel is about what happens that one summer in Greenwich, but it’s more deeply about Rachel and Claudia. I know there’s not a lot of plot happening in these lines, but we can feel that something is building in the book—

And in the second paragraph, we get what it’s building to: an accident that changes everything. This accident is THE key narrative turn that the book revolves around, although giving it away in the blurb isn’t a spoiler — the reader knows from p. 1 that something happens. The book, and the blurb, can be divided between before and after this event. First, we go from inciting incident to rising action and build to this major plot point. After, it’s all about the consequences.

I don’t say exactly what happens in this accident in the blurb, or the details of its aftermath. It doesn’t feel too vague, though. We know the family turns on Claudia and that Rachel has to make a choice. The stakes are clear, as well as the tone of the story. It leaves (I hope!) the reader wanting to pick up the book to find out what happens to these people, and what Rachel eventually does.

The book is tense, so the query should feel tense. If your book is funny, the blurb should be funny, etc. It’s the first introduction to your writing, so it should feel like it sets up a promise that your manuscript delivers on. I should add that it took A VERY LONG TIME to write this blurb, with a lot of drafts and input. This is something that takes time and revision to get right, and every single word matters. Don’t rush your work!

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Think about how you’d describe your book to a friend who asks “what’s it about?” You don’t go through and give a play by play of every scene that happens, leading all the way through to the ending. You’d say who it’s about (main character), what starts off the story (inciting incident), and what important, key event(s) illustrate what’s important and what matters to both the characters and the reader. You’d leave them with a sense of why this character and their choices are significant, with a hint of what’s to come. Think of what will make your friend say wow I have to read this!!!

It’s hard to find examples of successful queries, but you can read hundreds of examples of blurbs by looking at books that have been published. It’s a little bit different, of course. You want to leave out the editorializing that publishers add in (“a riveting debut” is not something to say about your own work — you’ll let the agent decide it’s riveting when they can’t put it down) but you can look at the central blurb and start to get a feel for how much is revealed, and just as importantly, what isn’t said because you don’t need to include it. Avoid telling the agent what you think they’ll experience. “This book will make you laugh out loud!” is far less effective than just… writing a line that makes someone laugh. Likewise, it’s much more important to focus on story rather than themes. No matter your genre, an agent wants to know there’s going to be some kind of internal engine that keeps the pages turning. Your task is to capture this in 150 words, so that someone who reads the blurb will want to open the book and read the first line. And once they read the first line… you want them to keep going!

I hope this helps. And if reading the blurb for GREENWICH has you itching to pick up the book and find out what happens, you can pre-order it now!

Good luck querying! No matter what, keep writing, call your reps, stand against book bans, hydrate, hug someone you love, and don’t quit.

Kate

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News!

• My debut novel Greenwich will be out in July! Adrienne Brodeur called it “A stunning debut…Fast-paced, beautifully written, vividly peopled… impossible to put down.” Greenwich is one of Publisher’s Weekly’s “buzz books” for summer 2025, and on Zibby Owens’s list of most anticipated new releases this year. Hit that preorder button!

• “Care and Feeding” is out in The Rumpus

• “Good Dead Girls,” is out in No Tokens

Dear Kate,

I found an agent who I thought seemed like an absolute perfect fit for my book — their wish list noted several items that my manuscript foregrounds — and I was feeling so hopeful. I’m sure you know where this is going. Nothing but a form rejection, and not even a long enough wait to suggest the agent fully considered it. This isn’t the first time this has happened (and I imagine I’d face the same thing if submitting to editors, too). If I can’t get a yes from someone who’s such an obvious fit, what hope do I have of someone else coming along? Is is time to face the facts that my manuscript just isn’t going to make it?

- Not a Fit

Dear Not a Fit,

Oh friend, this is always a tough one. You put so much work into your manuscript, and then you put even more work into your query package, and then you still have to find the agents to query, and sometimes it can feel like such a long shot trying to piece together their wants and wishes gleaned from google searches and a few lines on a MSWL page… and then through the fog of doom you spot what seems like THE prize: an agent who seems to want exactly what you’ve written. Only to get the email equivalent of a shrug.

First: You did everything right here in finding an agent who seemed like a good match and shooting your shot with them. This is how the work gets done, and you’re doing it. Whether they respond the way you’d hoped for is one of the many, many things in publishing that’s always going to be out of your hands, but it doesn’t mean that you quit or that you give this one “no” too much power to shape how you feel about yourself and your work. <3

“Fit” can be a nebulous and frustrating term that agents and editors often use to describe why something is a no for them: “It’s just not a fit for my list at this time,” or some similar variation that means “this isn’t right for me.” Everything about writing is subjective and “fit” is no different. What does it even mean????

“Not a fit” is NOT a measure of quality or the fitness of the manuscript itself. Repeat after me: it’s not about how “good” or “bad” the book is!!!!!!! It’s about whether the book feels like a match with the agent’s interests, their connections within the industry (do they have editors in mind that they think they can sell your manuscript to), and whether it folds in with the rest of the roster of authors they represent (is it similar enough that it feels in line with the rest of their list, but not so similar that it would overlap or compete with other works they’re trying to sell). Some of that has to do with “do I like it?” But fit is still a little different than even that, because it’s not just about like/dislike. It really is about how it fits in with everything else going on professionally in the agent’s world — and you (and I) aren’t privy to all that information.

You don’t know and can’t guess what’s going on on the agent’s side of things. The fact that they described wanting a book that’s similar to your manuscript * in some ways * doesn’t mean they’re obligated to want your book in particular. I can say I love The Secret History and want to read a book just like it, but I’m not going to automatically fall in love with every book that bills itself as “for fans of The Secret History” just because someone else thinks/expects me to. I might love it! But I might not. An agent might have 100 queries that all match the same part of their MSWL that yours does, and they simply can’t say yes to reading all of those manuscripts. Some people are going to hear no’s even when it seems like it “should” be a yes, and all you can do is cross that agent off your list, feel a little bad for them that they let this opportunity pass them by, and move on.

The speed with which an agent responds to a query also isn’t something you can read anything into. A fast no isn’t more of a no than a no that takes months to get there. Maybe you caught them (or their intern) at the exact moment they were going through their query inbox. People can read quickly (these are professional readers, after all), and what feels lightning fast to you doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t read your opening pages. Or maybe they did skim it too quickly — but readers are going to do the same when they pick up your book in a bookstore and decide from one paragraph if they want to keep reading. People don’t always spend enough time evaluating these decisions — but I can also understand, too, that it doesn’t always take more than a page or two to make the subjective and entirely personal decision about whether you want to read on.

Likewise, an agent who requests to read a full very quickly might be super enthusiastic, yay! But that doesn’t mean you’re more likely to get an offer from them, or that someone who took longer to make a request or an offer is somehow less committed. It’s tempting to assign meaning to any piece of information we can get our hands on, especially when we have so little else to go on. But in a lot of cases, the information just doesn’t tell us very much. Again, we just don’t know what’s happening on the other end of our inbox, and I don’t think it’s all that helpful to try and guess.

I definitely got plenty of form rejections (or radio silence) from agents who I’d really thought I had a meaningful shot with, and the same thing with editors, too. Agents you think should like your work are going to pass, and editors you think should like your work are going to pass, and readers you think should like your work are going to not buy it or buy it and never get around to reading it or read it and not like it and it can be a shock because you think, these are the people who are supposed to like my writing!!! But there’s no “supposed to” here. Have you ever picked up a book that you thought you’d love, only to find that it just doesn’t hit? Or what about a book that you couldn’t get into, but maybe it was your mood or the particular moment in your life, and when you came back later to it, you loved it and got what all the hype was all about? Ever read a book other people are obsessed with and you just don’t see it? (What is wrong with people?!?) Or read a book that you devoured, and then you check out the reviews other people have written and can’t believe you read the same book as all those haters? (Again: WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?)

Querying is just guess work. You have to hold onto enough hope to keep sending out those emails, but you also can’t put too much stock into any one person, such that you get derailed or start doubting yourself if something doesn’t pan out as you’d hoped. You have to do it enough times that the nos just start to feel less shocking. (See my post on making sure to send your work out enough.) Rejections are never going to not sting—but one person’s pass is not the final verdict on your writing or your worth. Every single book you read has been rejected, sometimes a lot. Every novel coming out has gotten form rejections and silence and “not a fit” and “not for me.” Even books that had agents and editors fiercely competing for them didn’t have every single person in the industry saying yes. Rejection is baked into publishing, and everyone faces it along the way.

As far as whether there’s any point in continuing to query—that really all depends on where you are in the process. How many queries have you sent? If it’s still early days, lick your wounds for a minute, sure. But then brush yourself off and keep sending out more. Eventually this form rejection will just be one among many, but you’ll also have enough requests in there to see the futility of trying to predict what someone’s interest levels will be.

If you’ve been sending out your work for a while and accumulating a steady pile of form rejections with no full requests, it might be a sign that it’s time to rework your query letter and/or the manuscript itself, to see if there’s some other work you could be doing to repackage your pitch. But I don’t think you can come to that conclusion based on one response from one agent. Not a fit for this agent doesn’t mean not a fit for ANYONE. What this agent said about your work has no bearing on what another agent might think, so no, the rejection right now doesn’t mean you have no hope with anyone else, just like if one reader rates a book 2 stars on Goodreads that doesn’t mean that every single reader is going to say the same. You wrote this book for a reason — you believe in it enough to have put in all the time and effort to get to this point. I hope you can reconnect with the part of you that stands behind that work, and see if there aren’t other agents on your list you want to reach out to.

If you really think you’ve exhausted your possibilities, or you aren’t feeling it right now, it’s OK to take a break from the querying trenches. Sometimes you need to regroup, and see your query and your work with fresh eyes. The best thing might be to start something new so you have another project in the works and aren’t pinning all your hopes on what random strangers might think. If you start giving this one agent too much power in your brainspace, remember that it’s subjective, and what one person dismisses still has the power to be someone else’s favorite new book.

Whether it’s with querying, submission, writing something new, or all of the above, keep going!

Kate

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Broad Editorial

Dear Kate,

I’ve started querying and I see agents asking for the first 10 pages, the first 3 chapters, the first XX words, and they don’t want any attachments.

1. Do I literally just paste it below the query letter, even if it’s long? (My first 3 chapters aren’t short!)

2. If it ends somewhere in the middle of a line or the middle of a scene, should I cut the scene shorter? Later?

3. Do I include my prologue? It’s about 8 pages, so agents who ask for the first 5 pages won’t even know there’s something beyond the prologue, and agents who ask for 10 pages will only be getting the first 2 pages of my actual chapter 1. But if I started it with chapter 1 and then they request the full manuscript, will they be mad when they see that actually it starts with a prologue?

Sorry if this is way too basic or if I’m being too literal about the instructions. I just don’t want to do this wrong and be automatically rejected because I couldn’t follow directions!

Thanks,

C.M.

Dear C.M.

Congrats on starting querying! It’s a long process and every agent and agency has their own submissions requirements, so it’s good to make sure you’re giving each agent exactly what they ask for. It’s not too basic or too literal to check in about what the directions mean!

I’ve broken out your three questions, below, with more info on each. If anything is still uncertain, feel free to write back so I can clarify!

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Do I literally just paste it below the query letter, even if it’s long? (My first 3 chapters aren’t short!)

Yes! Literally paste the requested pages below your query letter, no matter how long it is. For the last line of your query letter, write: “The first 10 pages are pasted below” or whatever specific thing they’ve asked for. Then: “Thank you for your consideration.” (That’s it! No more!) Then your name/sign-off. Then make two spaces and hit paste.

It doesn’t matter how long your first 3 chapters are — if they ask in terms of page numbers, send the page numbers. If they ask in terms of chapters, send the chapters. If they say 3 chapters but they really want 30 pages, then they should’ve said 30 pages! But you can’t guess what they’re thinking if they don’t tell you. If you send 3 chapters when they say 3 chapters, you’re following the directions.

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Occasionally an agent will ask for an attachment, especially if it’s something longer like the first 50 pages. In that case, make a Word doc, paste your query at the beginning so they have it for easy reference/a reminder when they open the document, and include the pages double-spaced and formatted like a normal Word manuscript (Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced, standard margins, numbered pages).

Pro tip to save you 10,000 hours later on: Make one email each for all of the standard things agents generally ask for: 5 pages, 10 pages, 50 pages, first chapter, first 2 chapters, first 3 chapters, synopsis. Put the description in the subject line and paste the content in the body of the email. Then save a draft of each one in your email (better yet, make a folder or label for your querying materials so it’s all accessible in one place.)

Format the pasted text how you want in the body of that email. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but I liked having, for example, a space between paragraph and between “Chapter One” and the start of the text, so it didn’t all run together. It doesn’t have to be formatted like a Word doc — agents know they’re reading something pasted into an email. But it can be easier on the eyes to not have it all run together. If there’s any internal formatting, like italics, you’ll need to put that in, too, because pasting your Word doc into the email will erase those things.

Now every time you send a query, you just have to open the draft email that has the required number of pages, copy, and paste. If you’re constantly having to hunt on your computer for the right pages, and constantly re-formatting them in your email with every new query, this process is going to get real tedious real fast.

For agents who use a form, their form will have spaces for your to paste (or upload) your materials. In that case, you can go into your handy dandy email drafts, copy your saved pages, and paste them right in the form.

If it ends somewhere in the middle of a line or the middle of a scene, should I cut the scene shorter? Later?

Find the closest reasonable stopping place. If you wrap up a paragraph 9 and 3/4 pages of the way down, send that. If you have a paragraph that goes 2 lines onto page 10 before it ends, it’s OK to include that whole paragraph. 10 pages means 10 pages, not 12, not 15… but it doesn’t mean the agent will stop reading, blacklist you, and put a curse on you, your children, and your children’s children if you give them a smidge onto page 11 to hit a natural stopping point.

Consider it from the agent’s perspective: they’re receiving hundreds of queries a week. They want to read 10 pages to get a feel for your book. They aren’t going to reject you because you gave them 10.5 pages. If they’re going to say no, it’ll be because those 10.5 pages didn’t hook them or weren’t quite right for them or w h a t e v e r. And it’s not like they were going to reject you based on your 9 3/4 pages, but then that one additional paragraph you managed to squeeze onto page 10 changed their mind and now they can’t wait to read the full ms!!!

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If they ask for 10 and you send 20, then yeah, that starts to look like you might be a difficult author to work with. But they probably also know that other agents are asking for 20 pages, and it’s a lot to juggle different submissions requirements, so even then, I don’t think they’d reject you based on that alone. This isn’t to say to send agents more than they request because they’ll consider it an honest mistake and keep reading!! It’s to remind you that everyone is human in this process and doing their best.

Ultimately, the work has to speak for itself. It has to be as enticing in the first 5 pages as it is in the first 50. It’s often tempting to want to send more pages as though that will give the agent more time to fall in love with your book. But it doesn’t really work that way. Be so confident in your pages that you know you can get an agent interested based on the first page, the first paragraph, the very first line!

Do I include my prologue?

YES. Your prologue is where your book starts. It’s part of your book. When a reader opens your beautifully published new release, do you want them to skip the prologue and start at chapter one? No! It’d be like telling them not to start reading until p. 73, because that’s when the book really starts getting good. If you don’t include the actual beginning, it makes the reader wonder…what was wrong with those first pages, that you don’t seem to need them?

Agents don't want to pick up in the middle; they want to start at the beginning. If they like what they read and request more pages, they will either discover that Chapter One is different than what they first read, if they hadn’t gotten that far. Or they’ll get a taste of the first chapter, even if only a page or two. It’s not fundamentally different than any opening pages you send: the agent reads a little, but there’s more to the story that’s waiting for them. When you paste in your pages, you will say Prologue above the prologue, just like you will say Chapter One above chapter one, so it will be clear to the agent, anyway, where they are in the narrative.

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Unasked for advice that I’m inserting anyway: You want to be 1,000% certain that the prologue is adding something absolutely essential to your manuscript. This is true for every page of your story, but it’s especially true for any opening pages and double especially true when those opening pages are a prologue. When prologues work well, they’re great! I’m not anti-prologue. But they can sometimes be a crutch. If nothing much is happening in the beginning of your manuscript, so you throw in a prologue hinting toward a later, exciting scene, just to prove to the reader that something is coming… it can be a sign that your actual Chapter One isn’t standing up on its own yet. Only you can answer is your prologue is truly necessary! But if yes, the prologue is part of your book, then the agent wants to read it. If no, the prologue isn’t part of your book, then you don’t need it in the manuscript at all.

One last thing: an agent isn’t going to be mad at you if they tell you to send something, you send it, and it turns out they don’t like it or don’t want to represent it. This is a business; it’s just how it works. Some things click and some things don’t. But they certainly won’t feel hoodwinked if they ask for the first 10 pages, you send those 10 pages, and part of those pages (or all of those pages!) are a prologue. Books have prologues! And since, as I mentioned above, your prologue will start off saying Prologue, they will know exactly what it is.

I could see it being irritating, though, if you send them what they think are the opening pages, they request to read more, and then you send them different opening pages — which is what would happen if you don’t send a prologue to begin with, and only later on tell them oh by the way, this actually starts with a prologue. It’s not that they’re going to be mad at you. They just want to read the book that you wrote as you wrote it, from beginning to end.

And the end of the day, if they want to read more, they’ll request pages — regardless of whether you have a prologue and whether you send them 9 pages or 11. And if they don’t want to read more, keep querying, and keep revising your materials, until you find the right person who does.

Don’t give up!

Kate

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Broad Editorial

Hi Friends,

I’m currently in Vermont, wearing two pairs of socks as I watch the snow fall—not in a postcard-perfect way but where the wind is whipping it off the roof and it’s predicted to turn into the worst substance on earth: freezing rain. Since I’m on a bit of a vacation (although “vacation” + freezing rain has me rethinking my life choices) and since so many new folks have joined over the last year (hiiii, I’m so glad you’re here!!) I decided to dig into the archives and see what I was writing about last January.

This post on how to write a synopsis remains one of my most popular. I’m re-sharing it for those of you who are new, those of you who maybe weren’t ready to write a synopsis this time last year but are eyeing one now, and those of you who have a synopsis but might want to give it another look. Even if you don’t need a synopsis, consider writing one to see how your manuscript is working in the big picture. It can be an incredibly useful exercise to find the weak points of your story and to hone in on the heart of your story.

I’ve added some edits, because I’m always rethinking and learning new things, and I’ve linked to additional posts I’ve written since then on other elements of querying.

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That high-pitched wailing you hear? That’s the collective cries of authors everywhere trying to figure out how to write a synopsis. When I was announced that I was starting this Substack, the very first question I got was: “Can you do one on synopses?”

So here it is. THE GREAT SYNOPSIS SUBSTACK. Or, how to summarize your entire novel without losing your mind.  

What is a synopsis?

A synopsis is a short document that summarizes your ENTIRE book. Including the ending. Including spoilers. Unlike a blurb that hooks the reader and makes them want to pick up your book and read on, a synopsis shows your reader all the key points in your book so they don't have to read it.

Different agents may ask for different lengths. It's common to have a one page synopsis, a two page synopsis, sometimes a three page synopsis (I've never seen anyone ask for longer than that). This is generally in the 200-300 word range, or the 300-500 word range.

[Edited to add: I’ve been recommending people write a one-to-two page synopsis and leaving it at that, because it’s more versatile.]

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I already wrote a whole @#$%^ book. Why do I need to write more?

Synopses started making more sense to me—and less like yet another aggravating publishing hoop to jump through—when I understood who reads them and why.

Agents:

Agents may ask for a synopsis because they want to skim a summary before they commit to reading an entire manuscript. It's entirely possible to have a sh*tty synopsis and a fantastic novel. But if there are major plot problems in a synopsis, it can indicate that the novel has problems as well, and an agent may want to know that before they decide whether to spend hours reading.

There are also genre conventions an agent will expect your book to follow, if those are the genres you’re writing in. If you’re querying a romance and the characters all die in the end, or a mystery that doesn’t get solved, or a sci-fi thriller that—surprise!—turns out to have all been a dream…an agent probably wants to know if a book is a non-starter before they’re 300 pages in.

If this sounds negative, remember that an agent may get really excited to find out where your story goes. It’s an opportunity to show off, in a short amount of space, how great your work is.

[Edited to add: When I started writing a new manuscript this past year, I first sent my agent a synopsis so we could discuss the story I wanted to write and she could give me her input before I got too in the weeds. This was SO SO HELPFUL, I CANNOT RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH. Things changed once I actually wrote the manuscript, but writing that guide for myself—and getting feedback on it—was invaluable!]

Editors:

When your agent sends your manuscript to an editor, the editor will often get what's called second reads, when they pass your work around to colleagues in their office and try to drum up support. Again, everyone is inundated with manuscripts, so they may want to get the gist of your book before they commit to reading the whole thing.

Or, I have to assume, they get excited by the synopsis and give the green light to go ahead even if they don’t have time to read the full manuscript themselves.

I had this happen when I sold How to Fall, an early romance novel I wrote under my pen name. I was glad I’d taken the time to write and revise my synopsis, so I wasn’t scrambling when suddenly an editor asked my agent to send it to her!

[Edited to add: This didn’t happen when I sold my forthcoming literary novel, GREENWICH, to St. Martins this fall, but since it did happen with one of my romance novels, I have to assume it’s still a thing….]

The rest of your publishing team:

Even after a publisher takes on your novel, more people will continue to work on it. Think of your synopsis as a little bundle of your novel that someone in sales, or marketing, or the art department might read to get a sense of what the book is about. There are other internal forms you may wind up filling out to convey this information — different publishers do it differently. It’s helpful to already have the synopsis handy if needed.

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What should a synopsis include?

• Setting.

• Main characters.

• Inciting incident.

• What happens next?

• Midpoint.

• Is there another turning point?

• Climax.

• Resolution.

Maybe your narrative doesn't follow all of those components exactly. Regardless, you can see how a synopsis lays out the whole arc of a story. You don't need all your secondary characters or subplots, just the most important pieces.

Tips and Strategies:

• Write your synopsis in third person present tense, regardless of how the novel is written.

• Stick to one point of view, even if your synopsis contains multiple viewpoints. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it can make your life easier. Phrases like “Little does she know…” or “Meanwhile…” can allow you to fold in information without going all in on a second character or subplot.

• Start by brainstorming everything that comes to mind as a key moment in the narrative. Then think about what’s truly essential and pare it down from there.

• Write down the inciting incident (what changes your protagonist’s “normal world” and gets the narrative rolling?). Then write the climax. Then think about how your character gets from Point A to Point B, in the fewest steps possible.

• I write out a dry, dull account of what happens (yawn). Then, I look at why it happens. Regardless of your genre, a synopsis conveys an emotional journey—why does your character do what they do? What are their motivations? Why will the reader care? Once I’ve gotten the basic plot points down, I rewrite my synopsis with an eye toward emotion, not just “this happens then this happens then this happens the end.”

• Imagine you’re telling someone what your book is about, including the ending. What do you include? What do you leave out?

• Have someone read your synopsis who’s read your novel.

• Have someone read your synopsis who hasn’t read your novel.

• Give yourself plenty of time to write and revise. This isn’t something to rush or bang out in just a few hours! You may need to come back to it, rewrite, and edit as needed. This is TOTALLY NORMAL and not a sign that you don’t know what you’re doing or your book is crap and you need to fling the whole thing out the window, take a hammer to your laptop, and move to Fiji.

• Of course you want your synopsis to be well written — it’s still a reflection of your writing. But it doesn’t have to be artistic, especially if the artistry takes up valuable real estate or detracts from the work the document has to do. It’s more important to get the job done.

• Your book is not too complex, too deep, too original, or too brilliant to summarize. Sorry! If you’re very sure you absolutely cannot write a synopsis that conveys what your story is about, you may not be interested in doing the kind of promo and marketing traditional publishing (with an agent and publisher) will want to pursue. That’s okay — self publishing is a great option. But you’ll still want to figure out how to describe your book to capture a reader’s attention.

Edited to Add: More Ask An Author Resources:

The best way to get better at writing synopses is to practice doing them. Practice for the book you’re working on now. Practice for a book you’re reading, or a movie you’ve watched. Give yourself plenty of time and plenty of drafts. And let me know if you have follow-up questions about synopses, or anything else.

You got this.

Happy writing!

Kate

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Broad Editorial

Dear Kate,

I’ve been working on my query letter and I think I’m finally ready to go. But some people in my writing group said it’s a dead zone now and that you basically can’t query after November. Is this true? Should I wait? Thanks for your help.

- A.J.

Dear A.J.,

This is a question I get a lot starting in October (and then again in May or so) and while I think there’s some truth to the idea that things ebb and flow depending on the time of year, I also think there’s no perfect time and there’s no true “dead zone,” either.

I don’t think you should query American agents the week of Thanksgiving or that stretch from right before Christmas to right after New Years when everyone is panicking, eating cookies, traveling, or panic-eating cookies while traveling. I think the last week in August through Labor Day isn’t the number one time that agents are glued to their inboxes, either. Beyond that, though? Agents will be busy with holidays and busy with personal things and busy with publishing things (book fairs, etc.) but it’s not your job to guess or anticipate what’s happening on their end, and it’s impossible to try.

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A query is a professional email, so it’s similar to other times when you would or wouldn’t send a professional inquiry or submit a job application. As in, don’t send it on New Year’s Eve. But I don’t think you have to treat the entire month of December as a stretch when absolutely zero work is getting done.

When people seem like they’re rushing a draft, I like to remind them that this is a slow time of year in publishing and there’s no reason not to wait until the new year. I think that advice is true and I stand by it. This isn’t the one window to query, so there’s no reason to rush!

But when people are really, really, REALLY ready to go and are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for half of fall and winter to be over, I do think it’s OK to send some queries in early December, and I stand by that advice, too. Agents are still reading queries right now. If they aren’t, all that means is that your query will sit in their inbox longer before they respond to you. It’s not going to change the outcome of your query — it just might affect how long you’re waiting to get that response.

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Too many people immediately rush out and query their NaNoWriMo projects, but you read this newsletter so you won’t be that person. You know writing takes a huge amount of time, revision, feedback, and deep thought! Those dashed of NaNo queries will be deleted quickly whether an agent gets them in December or in the new year, so I don’t actually think you’re competing too much with the other stuff flooding their inboxes. A good query will stand out any time of year. A weak query won’t get stronger just because you sent it in a different month. What I mean by this is that yes, you want to pay attention to the calendar because there are some times of year when your work is less likely to be seen, and because it just looks, well, odd to be the person emailing on Christmas morning, whether you or the agent celebrate the holiday or not. But you cannot control the agent’s inbox, their existing workload, their editorial connections, or the list they’re shaping. I totally understand that we all want to exert some kind of control over the process, but the most important thing is to work on your novel and on your query letter, and then send your materials when they’re truly ready to go.

If you’d feel better waiting, it’s fine to wait! But unless your writing group is comprised entirely of *recently* agented authors, or agents themselves, I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule here that says you’ll be in trouble if you send any queries in December. The content of the query is what really natters—and of course the book itself!

Good luck!

Kate

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Dear Kate,

Thanks for the post you did about query letters. I have maybe a stupid question. When you’re done with the manuscript, you’ve sent it to other readers, edited it, and all that, and you’ve written your query letter — what then? How much does it usually cost to hire an agent, and how do you go about finding one?

- Lost

Dear Lost,

No stupid questions here! You’re not the only one who’s lost or wondering “what next?” Navigating the publishing world can feel like everyone else already knows what to do. It’s hard to know what information to search for or how to begin when we don’t even know what we don’t know.

You’ve got the right steps in the right order:

1. Write, edit, polish, and completely finish a novel. Nonfiction is generally sold on proposal, but a novel needs to be complete. An agent will likely have revisions to suggest, but the market is incredibly competitive and a good idea alone is unlikely to get you very far. Query FINISHED novels only.

2. Write, edit, polish, and completely finish your query letter and synopsis. See this post on query letters and this post on the synopsis.

3. Find agents to query.

4. Send your queries and keep track of the responses.

Let’s get deeper into Steps 3 and 4.

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How to Find Agents to Query

The good news is there are tons of agents out there, and the bad news is that there are tons of agents out there! Your task is to first make a list of agents who seem like they might be a good fit for your work.

What does fit mean?

1. They represent your general genre.

2. They represent your specific subgenre.

3. They’re open for unsolicited queries (this changes, so you have to check before you send the query and make sure the info you have is up-to-date).

This means you send your space opera to someone who represents space operas. You send your YA to someone who represents YA. You don’t send your gory mystery to an agent known for cozies. Agents specialize. Use this to your advantage. Sending your romance to an agent who doesn’t represent romance will get you an automatic rejection, so save yourself the trouble.

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You can also get more specific when you consider an agent’s interests and what connections they have to editors.

1. What other books have they sold that are like yours?

2. Are they looking for something that matches the vibe/aesthetic/tone/feel/themes/content of your manuscript? It doesn’t have to be exact, but can you picture your book fitting in with the rest of their projects?

3. Do they like books that you like, and books that are like yours?

4. Does their agency have a focus or something they’re known for, and would your book make sense as an addition to their catalogue?

You can’t guess what an agent is thinking. Sometimes you can think your book is the perfect fit and get hit with a form rejection anyway. But the more steps you can take to try to match your manuscript to the agent, the better the odds of reaching someone who’s going to connect with your work. (This, by the way, is where the personalization in your letter comes in. Since you’re already doing this research to find the agent in the first place, you have the basic material to use in a sentence or two to explain why you’re contacting them.)

“Fit” doesn’t have to be exact. But it should seem like, yeah, they did X book so I think they might like mine, too!

Here are sources I use to find agents. I’ve used these successfully myself, and to help other writers through this process:

1. Manuscript Wish List (MSWL)

   1. This free website has pages where agents share what they’re currently looking to acquire. Cross-reference this information against their agency bios. The search capability isn’t great, but with a little elbow grease you can find a lot of useful information.

2. Publishers Marketplace (PM)

   1. This is a paid compilation of almost all the sales happening in publishing. It’s $25/month but you can get it for just a month or two and then cancel. Not essential, but if you can afford it, I recommend it. It doesn't include every single sale, but if an agent says they’re looking for literary fiction and everything they’ve sold has been a middle grade caper, you should find someone else for your atmospheric novel about suburban marriage.

3. Writer’s Digest

   1. This free website lists a lot of agents and agencies and can give you ideas of people and places to then look up on MSWL, PM, QT, and Google to get more information.

4. Query Tracker (QT)

   1. This website has free and paid versions. It lists loads of agents and lets you view information about them and keep track of your queries. Personally, I find it to be information overload. I don’t think it helps with querying-related stress and anxiety to get that granular—but other people find it indispensable. You can make the right decision for you.

5. Google

   1. Just searching for “literary agents X genre” can give you lots of information. And then when you do find an agent or an agency, search for them and see what else comes up. Sometimes you’ll find interviews or other details you can use. One helpful thing to google is different conferences or events within your genre—see what agents are speaking or taking pitches and then google their names to learn more.

6. Book Acknowledgments

   1. Authors usually list their agents in the acknowledgments section. Think of other comp titles (your actual comps and a longer list of similar authors or books you think you’re kinda like) and see who represents them. Some of these may be big name agents, but if they’re open to queries, then shoot your shot! Every published author was once searching for an agent, too.

7. Social Media

   1. Many agents maintain a social media presence, largely on Twitter and the other sites like Bluesky that are cropping up to take its place. This is less robust than it used to be but you can still search for agent names, use the #MSWL hashtag, and see what comes up.

The more you get familiar with looking, the more you’ll get a sense of what’s out there. When you find an agent who seems promising, take a look at their agency and read the bios of other agents, too—sometimes you’ll find an even better fit. If you’re torn between two agents at the same agency, get as much info as you can on each and then just make the best choice you can. Often agents will share queries within the agency, too.

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Note: I tried using AI to see if it’s useful for compiling lists of agents, and the answer is noooooooooo. Even with increasingly specific prompts, it gave me agents that don’t exist, agents that don’t rep anything even remotely close what I asked it for, agencies that closed doors years ago, etc. User beware!

How to Keep Track of Your Queries

As you search for agents, you’ll need a way to keep track of everything. Some people use Query Tracker. Some people use a spreadsheet. You want everything to be organized and easily accessible, so you don’t lose track of anything important.

Whether you use a spreadsheet or something else, make sure you have:

1. Agent’s name

2. Agency

3. What are they looking for?

4. How to query them (email? online form?)

5. What information do you need to include with your query letter?

6. Date of query

7. Date and type of response

8. Additional relevant info, such as how long to wait before nudging them, if no response means no, and if you can query someone else at the agency if this agent says no.

If this seems like a long and involved process, that’s because it is. That’s why you want to make sure your novel is completely finished and that you’re really ready for this step. Then you want to give yourself enough time to do this research and compile your list. When it’s time to send, I recommend starting with batches of 20 or so agents at a time, so you can see how your materials are landing. If you send 50+ queries and get nothing but form rejections (generic rejection letters that could be sent to anyone), there may be something in your query and opening pages that isn’t enticing agents to read more. If you get personalized rejections (rejection letters that are specific to your book and give you concrete information about your materials) you can use that information to decide whether you need to revise, and if so, how. Ideally, you’ll get some requests for full manuscripts (the whole book) or partial pages (some portion of the manuscript an agent might ask to read before the whole thing).

For more on rejections, here’s a post I did on interpreting agent passes and a post on coping with hearing “no.”

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Querying is a numbers game. You need to send enough queries to give yourself a shot. If you only send 5 queries and they’re all rejections, you haven’t really learned enough about what the problem may be, or if there even is one. But if you send 100 queries and get only form rejections, something isn’t working with your materials—and it would have been nice to know that and correct course sooner, so you could send a better letter and a better manuscript to all those people. You can requery an agent if your manuscript is SIGNIFICANTLY revised, but it really needs to be a big change to be worth requesting another look.

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Don’t pay an agent upfront!

In all of this, note that there’s NO MONEY changing hands.

You don’t hire an agent.

You don’t pay them ANYTHING upfront.

The agent will take a cut of the money you earn—usually 15% but it can be higher for foreign sales. If you get an advance ($ the publisher first pays to buy the book), the agent gets 15% of that. If you earn royalties ($ made off of book sales), the agent gets 15% of that, too. The check you get from the publisher will already reflect this, and your agency contract will have a clause explaining how monies are kept and distributed. Either the publisher pays your agency and the agency cuts you a check for your portion less their share, or the publisher sends you a check for your amount and the agency a check for their amount. The money your agent receives never hits your bank account to begin with. You never pay them yourself.

If an agent requests money to read your materials, or to send your work to publishers, or at ANY point in this process, they aren’t a real agent and are taking you for a ride. This, by the way, is true for publishers as well—vanity presses that ask you to pay to be published are not real publishers and are scamming you. People still choose to do it that way, but please know upfront what you’re getting into. An agent nevers asks you for money and only makes money when you do.

The querying process is like applying for a job. You look for the places you want to send your materials, send a cover letter and whatever additional materials are specified, and then you wait. And wait. Unless the agency says otherwise, allow a minimum of 3-4 months before you nudge anyone. This process is slow. Send more queries, read more books, start a new project, try not to lose your mind.

More than anything, keep going!

Kate

I run Ask an Author entirely on donations, to keep information about writing and publishing free and available to all. THANK YOU to my paid subscribers who make this possible!! If you benefit from reading Ask an Author and are able to make a contribution, please consider supporting the work that I do. <3

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Dear Kate,

Can you talk about what goes into a query letter? I know you only get one shot with an agent so I want to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve looked through your past posts and didn’t think I saw this question answered, but apologies if it’s already been addressed (and maybe could you email me the link if it has?). THANK YOU!

- Query Newbie

Dear Query Newbie,

There’s lots of info in the archive around querying, including tips on when to start the process and avoiding rejection. But there’s no nuts and bolts on the query letter itself. So here it is!

A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO THE QUERY LETTER, Ask an Author edition

This iteration will be focused on fiction, because most of you write fiction. If you send a question about how to write a book proposal for non-fiction, I’ll go over that in another response.

Here are the five elements that go into a query letter for fiction:

1. METADATA

2. COMPS

3. BLURB

4. PERSONALIZATION

5. BIO

With the exception of the bio, which comes last, the order is somewhat flexible and metadata/comps/personalization can be separated or can all go in one paragraph, before or after the blurb.

Let’s go through the components one by one.

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Metadata

This is the relevant info about your book, including: TITLE (written in all caps), genre, and word count. It’s also called the housekeeping section. You can maybe add another clause adding more detail like the setting, central tropes, or a once-sentence hook, but it should be directly relevant to the novel and not read like padding or filler.

MY BOOK is a 90,000 word mystery set in the Scottish highlands.

MY BOOK is a 78,000 word YA romance about best friends and second chances.

MY BOOK is a 100,000 feminist speculative thriller that will appeal to fans of COMP TITLE and COMP TITLE.

Tips:

• Know the standard word range for your genre. (You can Google this or ask me.) Manuscripts that are much longer or much shorter than current expectations have a hard time succeeding in the market.

• Know your genre. Not sure what you’re writing? Read this post on genre. Then go read more books to figure out where yours fits on the shelf.

• A “fiction novel” is not a genre.

• Avoid generalizations. Anything you add to give the agent a sense of what the book is about should be short and specific. The danger here is meandering too much into general themes that could be about loads of books, not just yours.

• Avoid editorializing. It comes across as amateurish (and annoying) to say how great the book is, inflate your description with adjectives, or say how much other people love it. Agents want to evaluate the strengths of the manuscript on their own.

• Avoid negativity. Don’t tell the agent you aren’t sure if they’ll like it, or it’s been rejected 50 times already, or they probably won’t read it anyway. Querying an agent is like applying for a job. Keep it professional at all stages.

  ---

COMPARISON TITLES (COMPS)

I wrote a whole post on finding comps, so I’m just going to link to that here:

Comps are one more tool in your toolkit that you can use to give the agent a great pitch and signal what your book is like.

Tips:

• Pick 2-3 titles.

• Titles should be published within the last 3-5 years. If your comps are all 20+ years old, it doesn’t show the agent the sales potential for your book TODAY, and it can kiiiinda look like you haven’t read anything more recent and don’t know your genre super well.

• If you use an older title, pair it with a newer book.

• You can use a movie or TV show, but pair it with a book, too.

• Choose books that weren’t all major blockbusters. Including a midlist book helps show you didn’t just pick something popular because it’s popular. You’ll stand out by not being the fifth comparison to GONE GIRL that the agent’s read that day.

• Get specific in your comparisons. If a huge seller is the perfect title for you, illuminate something specific about that title to signal the connection, and/or pair it with another comp, too.

• Use useful phrases to incorporate the comps into your query:

  • “will appeal to fans of _____”

  • “is like _____ meets _____”

  • “has the [description] of _____ and the [description] of _____”

  • “is like _____ but with [description]”

THE BLURB

This is a big one and the meat of the query. The blurb is a short paragraph or few paragraphs of around 100-300 words that describes what your book is about.

1. Introduce your main character and, briefly, their starting world at the opening of the novel. Who are they and what to they want?

2. Give the inciting incident. What happens in your novel to change that starting world and set the story in motion?

3. Now that things have changed for your character, what do they want now? Regardless of genre, it should be clear that your protagonist has a goal they want to reach (what they want) and a reason for reaching it (their motivations).

4. What’s standing in the way of reaching their goal? This is the conflict that drives the story forward.

5. What choices will your character have to make, especially as the conflict intensifies? What do they do in the novel?

6. Many successful queries take the reader through approximately the midpoint of the novel. They do NOT give away the ending (that’s what a synopsis does). The midpoint is when it seems like everything is going to work out for your character—until something changes. Or when it seems like all hope is lost for your character—until something changes. Leaving the query on this note of “will they reach their goal and what will happen if they fail????” is the kind of implied question that makes someone want to pick up your book and find out more.

The main issues I see when editing queries are blurbs that are too vague and/or blurbs that go into too much detail but the wrong kind of detail. This is a product of talking about the story, instead of telling the story. TELL US WHAT HAPPENS. Character + conflict = story.

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Think of when you’re excited about a book and want to tell a friend to read it. “What’s it about?” they ask. You tell them the main protagonist and the main conflict they face. You might give a few interesting twists and turns, but you won’t give away the entire story. It’s hard to do this for your own work because you’re so close to it. But imagine you’re someone else encouraging a friend to read your book. What are the most important beats of your story? Character, setting, incident, consequence, incident, consequence, midpoint. These are the building blocks of your novel and they’re the building blocks of your query.

This isn’t about the themes. It goes beyond just the premise of the book. I wrote on premise vs story here, and it’s important to know the difference. You want to make sure your novel tells a story, and that your blurb tells the agent what that story is about.

Tips:

• Aim for 200-250 words.

• Include the protagonist, antagonist, and maybe one secondary character if relevant. You don’t need more characters than that.

• Multi-point of view novels tend to work best focusing on one pov. In dual pov novels, you can focus on one pov or have one paragraph for each character.

• Avoid editorializing. Don’t tell us the book is funny—make the query funny. Don’t tell us the book will rip your heart out—show through the central conflict that it’s going to be emotional. The blurb for a fast-paced thriller should be a different reading experience than the blurb for a cheery romcom.

• Go back to the manuscript itself. Sometimes it’s hard to show what happens in the query because nothing really happens in the book. :/ Make sure you’ve nailed down your plot, stakes, and narrative engine (what drives the story forward) in the manuscript, and it really will be easier to distill that into the query.

  

Examples:

Ignore the editorializing in these pitches and zero in on the blurbs themselves:

• INTO THE WOODS by Tana French

• THE POSSESSIONS by Sara Flannery Murphy

• THE MOTHERS by Brit Bennett

• THE INCENDIARIES by R.O. Kwan

• ANNIHILATION by Jeff VanderMeer

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PERSONALIZATION

This is the sentence or two you use to indicate why you’re querying the specific agent you’ve chosen. It’s not essential—but like comp titles, it can give you a leg up.

You want to research agents thoroughly and send your query only to those you think will be a good fit. This takes time, but it’s better to put in this time and have a chance of success than send your work out to any agent with a pulse and then wonder why no one wants to read your book.

Did you see a tweet by the agent describing something that matches your manuscript? Read something on their Manuscript Wish List? Do they represent another book you love? Do they have a forthcoming book you can’t wait to read? Why are you querying them and not someone else? Have an answer, and put that answer in your query! It doesn’t have to be extensive, and it isn’t about kissing up to them. It shows know who the agent is and what work they do.

“I read in your bio that you’re looking for historical fiction set in the 20th century, and I hope my literary novel about two families in the 1960s will be of interest.”

“I read on your MSWL that you love speculative fiction grounded in the real world.”

“I was so gripped by the dark tension in [another title they rep] and hope you might be interested in my domestic thriller, TITLE, complete at [word count], that will appeal to fans of [comp title].”

“I’m querying you because of your interest in _____.”

“I read in an interview with _____ that you loved _____ and are looking for _____.”

Personalizing a query isn’t a guarantee. It can be frustrating to feel like you’ve nailed an agent’s MSWL, only to get back a form response. We don’t know what else is going on in an agent’s inbox—but while nothing I’m writing here is a magic bullet, it should help give your query an edge.

BIO

End your query with a short biographical note written in the first person. Include writing credentials if you have them. Leave them off if you don’t. Your bio should be short and written in a tone that reflects the book. This is still a chance to show off your writing! If your book is light and funny, your bio can be quirky, too. If you’re a doctor and you’re writing a medical thriller, mention that! If you’re a teacher writing for children, mention that!

The key with a bio is not to overstate it. Being a doctor doesn’t automatically make you an incredible author, which is why it should just be one sentence and come at the END of your query letter—it’s not the selling point. Lots of teachers and parents get into writing for kids, but again, that doesn’t by itself make someone a great writer, so it warrants a sentence at the end but not more and not elsewhere. Non-fiction is where your platform and non-writing credentials come into play, but for fiction, it’s all about the manuscript itself.

Some things you can include, if you don’t have writing credentials:

• Where you went to school, if you did.

• Your job.

• Where you live.

• If you’ve done something interesting and less common with your work or your life.

Some things to avoid:

• Overexplaining your passion for your book’s topic. You wrote a whole novel, so it’s already assumed you care a lot about it!

• Too much about your non-writing credentials, if they aren’t really relevant to the novel at hand.

• It’s better to have a bio that’s too short rather than too long.

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  SALUTATIONS AND SIGN OFFS

Greet the agent as Dear First Name Last Name to avoid questions or errors about Mr./Ms./Mrs./Mx.

Each agency website will have specific information about how to query and what to include, including the number of sample pages and whether to add a synopsis. They’ll either have a website to use or a link to a form on Query Tracker.

If it’s via email, end your query saying “The first X pages are pasted below,” or whatever they’ve asked for. Don’t include an attachment if they don’t ask for one.

End saying “Thank you for your consideration.” Then give your name. And that’s it! No editorializing, no telling the agent you’re going to be the next big thing, no insisting they’ll be sorry if they don’t sign you. No apologizing and no self-deprecation. Just the information they need about your book, the information they need about you, and then whatever sample pages they ask for.

Your total word count for the query letter should be about 500 words, maybe less.

Have all your query materials handy and organized so you can just copy and paste what you need as you send things out.

Put the agent’s email in the “to” section LAST so you don’t inadvertaintly hit send too soon!

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Give yourself plenty of time to write and edit your query. Have other readers give you honest, targeted feedback—preferably readers who understand what a query is and what it has to accomplish. Reach out to me here or at Broad Editorial if you want help with your query or with comps and agent research. More than anything, be patient with yourself and with the process.

Keep writing, keep querying, and good luck!

- Kate

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Dear Kate,

I’ve been working on my first novel have sent it out to readers for feedback. I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but when should I start looking for a literary agent? I want to start planning my next steps.

- Anon

Dear Anon,

The number one mistake I see early writers make (my past self included!!) is querying too soon.

It’s not really fair to call it a mistake. Sometimes throwing something against the wall and seeing what sticks—or doesn’t :(—is the only way to figure out what we need to revisit, rethink, and revise. We can’t always get to that stage until enough rejections have come through to signal that our work isn’t as ready as we’d thought. But I wish I could wave a magic writing wand and save everyone some of that rejection in the first place by convincing each and every writer in your position to do one thing: wait.

Don’t wait forever! Don’t hold onto a finished manuscript out of fear, or a desire to avoid those rejections I’m talking about. Taking a leap and sending work out is part of the process, vulnerabilities and all.

But take the time you need to ensure you’re really, really, REALLY giving yourself the best possible chance of success. You wouldn’t serve your party guests raw cake batter, or a half-baked cake, or even a three-quarters baked cake. A cake that needs five more minutes in the oven is edible, even delicious, but still underdone. Agents (and publishers) are inundated with more manuscripts than they can possibly read. When they’re facing an entire buffet of delicious and impressive cakes to choose from (to extend this metaphor way too far), it’s easy to see why they can’t make their decisions based on the cake’s potential. If it’s not fully cooked, it’s not ready.

Many people think of the timeline as, okay, finish draft, get feedback, revise, polish up, start querying. Check, check, check. But I can tell you right now: there are more rounds of revision that your manuscript needs. Not because you’re a bad writer or I don’t trust your abilities—I haven’t read the book! You read this Substack, so obviously you have excellent taste! But I’ve read drafts by first-time authors and I’ve read drafts by multi-published authors and I’ve read my own drafts (so! many! drafts!) and they all, ALL, benefit from more thinking, more revising, more work. Because that’s how it goes! That’s not a flaw in the writing—that is the writing.

Writing is the accrual of significance through layers over time. In every successive draft, through every round of feedback, we see where to tighten, expand, deepen, improve. We see where to focus more of the story and where to let go. Where to shore up motivation and where to twist the knife deeper. We discover the book we’re writing by writing it, which means it’s often not until we get to the end of a draft that we start to see what the book is actually about—the central questions, the key plot points, the major themes, pulling together what happens in the narrative as well as what it all means. This is true regardless of your genre, and regardless of how commercial or literary your vision. I promise that books with a breezy writing style are labored over intensely to perfect their readability. There are no shortcuts here.

You’re doing the right first move by sending your manuscript out to readers. Your next move, while you’re waiting, is to rest, recuperate, and maybe start something new—a new novel, a short story, an essay, whatever keeps your gears turning and keeps you in the game without burning you out after the hurdle of finishing a draft. Take this time to read. Read a lot! Books in your genre, books outside of your genre, books you can learn from.1

Your next move, once you get that feedback, is to revise. (And keep reading.) For revision tips and how to approach this stage, see my post on revision.

Your next move after that is to do it all over again: get feedback, revise. Get more feedback. Revise again. Again. Again. Again. (Also: reading!)

I know. That sounds like an awful lot of revision. (And reading.) It is!!!!! At some point you may feel like the book is done well before that, and I encourage you at that point to set it aside for a few weeks, a few months, read a lot, write some other things if you like, and then come back and reread your own book with fresh eyes. Read it like you’re someone picking up a book in the store, busy, impatient, trying to decide if this is the book you want to spend your time and money on. Read it like you don’t know the author. As writers we have plenty of self-criticism, and I’m not trying to say to tear yourself apart, or to make yourself miserable comparing your draft to the polished, edited books on shelves. I’m also not saying that your manuscript should only be evaluated based on its salability or its place in the market. But an agent’s job is to sell your work, so at some point you have to start thinking about the reader and the experience they’ll have when they pick up your book.

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It used to be that agents would help you reshape and edit your work before going out to editors, and that editors themselves would, you know, edit, and continue to shape and improve the book before publication. And they do—but the bar is much, much higher. Agents need your manuscript to be closer to ready, because editors are just as squeezed and are rejecting more books than ever before. Minor plot holes? Fuzzy character motivation? All your characters sound sliiightly the same when they’re speaking? There’s nothing too small to address before you hit “send” on those first queries. (The same goes for if you’re hitting “upload” to self-publish.)

Often, though, I read manuscripts where the writer is worrying about word choice or a minor point on page 276, when in reality the inciting incident is too small or the opening chapters too slow or the main character only reacts to what’s happening or the scenes themselves continually deflate their own tension rather than building a narrative through-line. These are not observations about any one book and to anyone reading this, I’m not talking about YOUR book. (Except my own book — I just revised my own inciting incident because I got the 100% correct feedback that it needed to be more significant and doing this *completely* changed the story. Thanks, Sara!!) My point is that these are extremely common types of problems that appear. The issues in a manuscript and the reasons for rejection may be much bigger, more central to the backbone of the narrative, and require more substantial revision to fix.

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Here’s the real kicker. Once you fix those problems? It’s almost inevitable that when you strengthen one part of the manuscript, another part will feel weaker in comparison and now need your attention. Now that you aren’t distracted by that issue when you’re reading, you’ll start to notice other things. If your beta readers all commented on X issue, and you fixed X issue, your next round of readers won’t call attention to X…but they might notice Y and Z instead. That’s why it’s important to not stop your revisions after X is done. Keep going. Keep working. Get another opinion, another set of eyes.

I once had a manuscript with two different antagonists, and everyone said one of them read as flat because the other was much more dynamic and well-rounded. I did a huge amount of work to deepen the flat character, and guess what. The “well-rounded” character now became the one who looked meh in comparison. I’d thought I was done, but instead I had to do another round of revision to deepen the second character, too. And once the antagonists finally felt complete? I got feedback that some secondary characters weren’t pulling their own weight. Those secondary characters had been walking around fine and dandy in my earlier drafts, but now that everything was polished, tighter, deeper, more significant, they suddenly needed more work to keep up.

Give yourself this time. You owe it to yourself to make your work the best it can be. Even if this isn’t the manuscript that ultimately gets you an agent, putting in this work now will make your writing SO much stronger for the next book you write. The only way out is through.

But, back to your original question: how do you know when to start querying? Because you could keep revising forever! And that’s not helpful, either.

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There’s a certain point in all of my manuscripts where I start to feel like I could send the manuscript to five different people and I’d get five different opinions, but they’d be just that: opinions. They might be based on the idiosyncratic tastes of the individual reader, and the changes they’re suggesting would be unlikely to tip the needle in a substantial way. For all that I’ve talked about how fully done your cake (book) needs to be, it’s unlikely that changing that one line of dialogue is going to change an agent or editor’s mind either way. I can start to feel like I’m tinkering rather than editing, and while small changes can have a big impact, even that starts to yield diminishing returns. When I find that I’m rereading my manuscript, changing a word here or a word there, and then reading it again and changing those things back (lol/sob), it’s time to get the book off my desk because I’m not doing anything meaningful to it anymore. That doesn’t mean I’ll never make another change! Just that I’ve taken it as far as I can at this stage, and it’s time for the next step.

When I get feedback from readers that’s substantive, actionable, and makes a real difference to the story, I know something in the manuscript needs my attention. Regardless of whether I take their feedback or how I work it into the manuscript, I know the book isn’t done yet. When I get feedback from readers that feels like, well, they wish I’d written a different book, or they have personal preferences here and there—I wouldn’t necessarily ignore their advice, but I’d feel the book is closer to query-able.2

I should note that this feedback doesn’t have to come from a professional editor or be something you pay for. But it should be from trusted sources with real experience, who are reading your book cover to cover and can see the big picture as well as the details. They can be a mix of readers and writers, and they shouldn’t all be people who already love you and are predisposed to read your work with an open heart. Not that people need to be cruel when giving feedback! Far from it! But they need to be able to be clear-eyed and honest with you, and if you’re serious about your work and serious about wanting to be published, then you need to be able to take that honest feedback gracefully and eagerly, because your #1 goal here is to make your book better.3

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You can certainly start researching agents and putting together your agent list now, and working on your query letter and synopsis, because those take time and revision as well. It never hurts to be prepared and have a sense of how you’ll approach the querying stage. You just don’t want to get ahead of yourself and neglect the manuscript because you’re focused on polishing the query, or take a polished query as a sign that you’re ready to go. It’s still the book that needs to stand on its own. And sometimes as the plot of the book changes in revisions, the query itself needs to change. Sometimes, though, finding the holes in the query points to holes in the manuscript, which is an argument for writing a blurb before the manuscript is finished—while recognizing that both documents, the query and the book itself, will continue to undergo revisions.

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Write, revise. Read, revise. Get feedback, revise. Take your book as far as you possibly can, until there’s no stone left unturned and no angle you haven’t considered. The number of revisions this can take is sometimes shocking, and definitely daunting. But you go through it the same way you wrote your first draft: one word and one page at a time. There’s such joy in seeing a book come together, and in making the changes where you can feel it getting better day by day. Maybe not every day, and not in such a linear fashion. But the rewards are there, and I’m confident you will find them.

Keep writing,

Kate

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Hello all!

Welcome new subscribers! There are a host of new people here - I’m so glad to have you, and thanks for signing up! Be sure to explore the archive and let me know your burning questions about writing, craft, querying, and all the ins and outs of publishing.

I suspect many of you found your way here through Kate McKean’s excellent Substack Agents and Books (which I highly recommend) and her informative open Q&A chat she hosted.

I don’t have a new question to answer this week (!!), so I thought I’d do something a little different and share some thoughts I’ve been having ever since I read with interest the questions in Kate’s Q&A thread, a lot of which dovetailed with questions I get here and with some things that had been on my mind but that I hadn’t quite been able to articulate until that thread.

(This also means that if you do have a question, now’s a great time to use the form and ask!)

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One of the things that came up a lot in Kate’s Q&A were questions that went something like this:

• “If I do ______, is that an automatic rejection?”

• “If I don’t do ______, is that an automatic rejection?”

• “I’ve heard agents don’t like ______. If I’m too close to ______, is that an automatic rejection?”

In these cases, the fill-in-the-blank could be something like: start with a prologue, start with a line of dialogue, start with a character waking up in the morning, have a comp that’s a mega-seller, have a comp that didn’t sell enough, have a comp that’s more than 3 years old, have a comp that’s a movie or TV show, use an alternating point of view, use a single point of view, be under the standard expected wordcount for the genre, be over the standard expected wordcount for the genre… I could go on, but you get the idea.

Reading through these questions, the answer was always, inevitably: It depends.

My interest here isn’t in repeating “It depends” (even though yes, it really does depend!).

Instead, I want to take a step back and look at why it depends, and what I think these questions are really getting at, and how those of use who are writing, submitting, querying, and doing our overall best to make our work do everything we want it to on the page (and then ideally be read and enjoyed by others, too!) can (maybe!) shift some of our thinking to (even more importantly!) better understand this nebulous, mysterious, frustrating question of what agents (and editors, and readers) are looking for — and (re)consider how to approach our own work as we try to make it successful (in whatever highly individual and personal way success means to each of us).

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I don’t mean to speak for anyone, but I think a lot of us (me) are used to being good at things and feeling in control, and publishing is a time when a lot of us (me) suddenly feel out of our depth, subject to a great deal of criticism (or radio silence, which can feel even worse) and this is very shitty and very unfair and very hard to deal with.

Even if you aren’t coming from a background where, hello, I did my homework and was “rewarded” with A’s and thought that was supposed to mean something (?!?????), it can still feel like, okay, I did what I’m supposed to do (write a book) and followed the instructions I was given (query letter, synopsis, comps, metadata, personalized and targeted agents list, check check check), and in most other aspects of our lives that leads to, you know, RESULTS, and in querying that often leads to… form letters in our inbox, if we’re luck enough to hear anything at all.

It can feel like WHAT am I doing WRONG here. Or rather, I’m doing everything right, just as I’m supposed to, so why aren’t I seeing results? It must be because I did XYZ thing wrong (the “automatic rejection” language), and so if I make sure not to do XYZ and follow ABC instead, I’ll get the yes I’m looking for.

I certainly understand the desire, whether conscious or not, to find out the rules and nail the specific, concrete, actionable things one has to do to “make it” in this field. I know I’ve felt that way - and often still do. But this assumes a clear connection between input and output, cause and effect, if-I-do-this-right-I-will-get-my-reward, akin to if I get an A at “writing a novel” or “querying agents,” everything will fall into place. And publishing, not to mention writing in general, don’t really operate this way.

There are some universal truths to take to heart: the more you write, the better your writing will get. The more you read, the better your writing will get. There are definitely guidelines that can better set you up for success, and things like adhering to expected word counts and following standard query formats fall into that category. But the thing to remember is that these are guidelines, not rules. They’re in place to better help you succeed, not to dictate what you have to do to make your book work. That also means that doing them, or not doing, isn’t THE thing that will make or break your chances.

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I’m going to use the example of a prologue. Many agents and editors will say they don’t like them and would prefer writers jump in and get to the story right way. But if you’re reading this and your manuscript starts with a prologue, don’t panic or think you have to delete it or that there’s no way your book will sell! There’s no rule saying Prologues Not Allowed. I’m sure you’ve read plenty of books with fantastic prologues that do important and effective work in the novel — I know I have.1

In many instances, the problem comes when writers overly rely on a prologue to provide an easy shortcut to establishing action and interest in the beginning of a novel, when the beginning of the novel should itself be able to provide the drama and characterization and world-building and suck-you-in feeling all on its own. The prologue can serve as a Band-Aid hiding the fact that your beginning isn’t (yet) effective. When agents say not to have a prologue, they aren’t saying Prologues Are Bad.2 It’s that they’ve read a lot of prologues that aren’t strictly necessary to the book and that aren’t doing the kind of work that every part of your manuscript needs to be doing from page 1 all the way through. “Will my book be automatically rejected because it has a prologue?” No. But it could be rejected because the prologue isn’t working. These are two different issues, and it’s important to recognize the distinction! “Do I need to make sure my prologue is absolutely necessary to my book, that I cannot tell my story any other way, and I can confirm this through beta readers who aren’t my friends and family and through my own clear-eyed and attentive editing of my own work over successive revisions on which I’ve spent significant time?” Yes yes yes yes yes.

When I see questions like “If my novel cold-opens with a line of dialogue, will it be automatically rejected?” it makes me think of how much we’re looking for rules and prescriptions, as though that will show us the way to a publishable novel. But the real answer is: you can open your novel with dialogue if it works well. You can do absolutely anything in your novel. Really! As long as you pull it off. An opening line of dialogue might be a great way to draw us into the moment. Or it might feel confusing for the reader to have no idea who’s speaking or what’s going on. It all depends on how you do it. You, the writer, are the one who has to make that call.

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That is both wonderful and incredibly difficult - because it means there are rules but also not-rules. There are rules and you should follow them but also you can break them if you break them in a way that works, and no one can tell you what works means because it all comes down to your work and your taste and your reader and your reader’s taste and the indefinable space in which those multiple lines may or may not intersect. You need to believe in your work and your choices. You need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing on the page. You need to be open to criticism and feedback and to making significant changes. You also need to know when you stand behind your manuscript and other people can think what they think but their opinions aren’t going to make it any better, which is to say any more of a fully realized version of itself, and you can smile and say thank you and move on.

The question to ask isn’t: Will doing this thing mean I’m automatically rejected? The question is: Does this serve my story? Is it effective? Am I doing it intentionally, thoughtfully, and well? Publishers want books, especially debuts, not to be too long because paper is expensive. But they also want books not to be too long because many books don’t need to be as long as they are. It’s easy to be excessively wordy without needing all those words, and a tighter book is often, frankly, a better one. Just as a novel does need to be a certain word count to not be a novella — because if an agent sees a novel with an especially short word count, they’re more likely to think it might not be developed enough. It might not be fully realized yet. But a shorter word count might be the exact right number of words to tell your story, and padding it to reach some “acceptable” level isn’t the answer, either.

As you encounter “rules” about writing, it’s useful to file them away in your memory bank. But it’s also important to think about the reasoning behind the rules. Why a word count range? Why skepticism around prologues? Why does it matter where your opening begins? Why am I doing this is a question that can help you get an agent, get published, get whatever you’re hoping for - because it can make you a more intentional writer, more aware of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This is a different line of inquiry than guess what the agent is thinking or anticipate what the reader wants. And it’s different, in a subtle but important way, from if I do this, will I be automatically rejected?

I can definitely answer questions about norms and expectations and “Is my book too long?” and “I heard agents don’t like X and is that true?” I also hope that by reading this, you’ll also feel empowered to (re)consider your manuscript not (only) in terms of “What do agents want?” but “How am I telling my story, and how can I continue to improve it?”

Keep going!

Kate

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Hello, all!

Starting today’s post with some housekeeping, and then I’ll get to a question about genre, querying, and interpreting rejections.

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Dear Kate,

I’ve been querying a novel that I’ve worked on for years, and I’ve gotten multiple rejections that are variations on a theme: the agents say they love the book and the writing, but it’s a “saturated” market and they don’t see how my voice will stand out. I guess I should be glad I’m hearing anything from them, but what do I do with this kind of feedback? This isn’t my first time querying and getting nowhere. I’m considering scrapping it all and switching to another genre to see if I have more luck. Is this something people do?

- UGH

Dear UGH,

I think I speak for ALL OF US when I say your name sums it up.

I’m sorry you’re facing this frustration and sorry you’re feeling down about it. This kind of feedback is SO familiar, and it comes from both agents and editors. Sometimes it really means the market is jam packed and your work isn’t grabbing them more than other manuscripts they’re reading. Sometimes it means they don’t know how to market your book, or how they would pitch it, or they don’t have the right contacts to pitch it to. Sometimes it means they don’t have something more concrete to say, and that’s the generic line they go with. Sometimes it means you just haven’t connected with the right reader yet, and you have to keep going.

I’m going to say something that might sound harsh but bear with me because it’s NOT meant that way, and I promise that after the less-fun part, I will get to the upshot and it will (hopefully) be worth it.

Ready?

I’m not convinced those pass letters you’re receiving are personalized rejections. I can’t speak to every agent rejection, obviously, and I’m not reading YOUR rejections. But I want to raise this possibility for you and for anyone reading this: I’ve seen writers be hurt or excited or have some kind of reaction to what they think is a personalized rejection specific to their manuscript, but the reality is that it’s probably (or sometimes definitely) a form letter. Form letters can be really nice. Which is a good thing! But there's often a tone to them and a characteristic vagueness that makes you realize they could kinda be about anyone’s manuscript, not just yours.

“I don't have a vision for how to place this in a crowded market” (or something like that) feels to me like it could go either way. It might be a statement about your writing and your voice and whether they think it stands out among hundreds of other submissions. It might be totally genuine – they like it and they also don’t know how to position it so it will jump out to editors. But it also might be something they say about a lot of manuscripts they read. It’s a variation of “I don’t see a place for this on my list.” That could mean a lot of things, some within your control but most of them not. The bottom line is that it’s not a match, and while it’s good to get a sense of how your writing is landing with agents and what you might work on in your revisions or for your next manuscript, at the end of the day you can’t tear your hair out trying to analyze every “no” you get.

I'm not writing this to say that yours are definitely form rejections. I don’t know! I'm writing this to encourage you to not read too much into it. To not take a few emails from a few agents as the determining factor in shaping your writing, your voice, your sense of self as a person and as a writer. These passes ESPECIALLY shouldn’t dictate what you love to write, or your chosen genre.

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Say you switch gears and start writing in a different genre. Which would you choose? Which genre isn’t currently stuffed to the gills with eager writers trying to break in?

I hear the same “it’s really tough right now” about romance, literary, fantasy, sci fi, adult, YA, MG, picture books, mystery, thrillers, horror… If you can name a genre, I can find you an agent/editor/book scout/someone’s grandma lamenting how saturated the market is and how difficult it is for new authors to break in.

We have an abundance of riches, with amazing books to choose from and more people writing than ever before, combined with strikes and layoffs and people leaving the industry in droves, which all adds up to make a serious supply/demand problem. We have WAY more people trying to get their books published than there are editors who can take them on. This sucks! For everyone! It’s also weirdly liberating??? Because there’s no shortcut to a trad pub deal. There’s no “right” answer, which means you aren’t doing the “wrong” thing.

You aren’t writing in the wrong genre or in the wrong way. The cards are stacked against you because it’s capitalism, baby, and the cards are stacked against all of us. Write what you love. Write what makes you excited to sit down at the computer. Maybe not all the time, because some days are like that. But when you get that glimmer, that excitement—when you experience the JOY that made you want to write in the first place. Follow that, not the market or the whims of a few agents based on a few sentences that don’t, in themselves, give you enough information to interpret anyway.

Got an idea you’re excited about in a different genre? Go for it!!!! Don’t feel beholden to the genre you started writing in just because you began there. This isn’t a financial decision for you because you aren’t making any money (yet) from your work, so it really can be about what grabs you and where you’d most like to see yourself end up down the line. Remember—whatever you write will wind up being what you have written. Whatever you don’t write won’t become one of your books. What do you want to be working on? What do you want to become part of your body of work?

If you don’t have something sparking you in another genre and you still feel drawn to the genre you’ve been writing in, even if it’s difficult and discouraging and sometimes you want throw the computer out the window, stick with the hard thing. Take a break if you need it. But don’t let some agents telling you it’s a tough road make you feel like you can’t do it. You can do hard things. You wrote a whole book! Multiple books, if you’ve queried multiple times. It’s going to be hard in any genre, and how lousy would it feel to spend a million hours writing your compromise book, only to get the same “I don’t know how to make this stand out” rejections.

Bonus: you’re much more likely to have that spark in your writing, that surprise in your plot, that depth to your characters, if you’re truly into what you’re putting on the page.

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I think it's important for writers to be aware of the market and to understand their place in it. But genres that are hot cool down. Genres deemed “dead” get resuscitated. If you're looking at traditional publishing, the timeline is so long that you can't get ahead of the trends. By the time you write, query, submit, and sell a manuscript, you're looking at potentially years—and then it still takes another one to two years to publication. It's a slooow process. You can’t look at a snapshot of the market right now and make your plan for how you’re going to seize your opening, because by the time your book comes out, the whole scene may be different again. That's why you have to write your own work, in your own voice, in your own direction.

The same thing is true for trying to game the system by writing in a less popular genre. You could start writing a book tomorrow in whatever genre you think is going to be the most hospitable—although as I've already said, I'm not sure what that genre would be. You still don’t know what the publishing landscape will look like by the time you’re ready to query, let alone go on submission. Smaller genres have fewer agents reading, fewer editors acquiring, and fewer readers to sell to — it’s still hard to break in. Again, I'm not saying this to be a downer. I'm saying this to encourage you to write what you want.

The more you write, the better your writing will get. Stronger, sharper, more vivid, more fully realized, more full of surprises. More YOUR voice and energy and style. The more you read, the better your writing will get. You will have more tools at your disposal, more tricks in mind for how to paint a scene or move through time or break a chapter or complicate a character. The more time you spend on this craft, the more you will raise your game. If you’re trying to do something that’s done a million times before, then yeah—it’s going to be hard to make your spin on vampires who glitter in the sun stand out, since Twilight already got there. But the more time you put into your work—whatever genre it may be—the more you’ll solidify your own take.

Good luck.

Kate

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Hi all! My last post was all about comps, aka comparison titles, and some of you had additional questions. I’ve combined them here to keep all the follow-up in one place. You can read the original post on comps here:

As always, send me your questions — about querying, submitting, craft, best practices, whatever might be on your mind or holding you back — and I’ll tackle them in the next newsletter. I look forward to hearing from you!

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Dear Kate,

I really enjoyed your recent newsletter article “How do I find comps?!“ One lingering question I had after reading through this: when it comes to trilogies, do I use the first book or do I reference the name of the trilogy? Thank you.

- About to Query

Dear About to Query,

Glad you enjoyed the post! This is one of those fuzzy things where there’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer. As in, I don’t think an agent will have one preference in mind and then penalize you for doing the opposite, you know?

If you’re talking about a series with a number of books, I’d just put the first book so it’s not like “here’s my manuscript that will appeal to fans of this 14-book series that was published over a period of two decades.” :)

If you’re writing a trilogy, generally the best practice is to only query the agent with the first book and say it “stands alone but has series potential.” Even if you’ve already written the whole trilogy and are raring to go — from the agent’s perspective, it’s hard to think about reading and selling three books when they haven’t even read (or sold) the first one.

Based on that, I’m inclined to suggest that you use the first title in the trilogy as your comp title, to keep things focused on that first book.

However! If your manuscript really connects to the arc of the whole trilogy —for example if there’s something in the resolution, or in the weighty middle of the second book, or it just feels like the whole trilogy is the right fit (publishing = vibes!!) then go ahead and name the whole series.

I think an agent will pick up what you’re saying either way. The important part is that you’ve got some kind of comparison to show you know your audience and the market and have a sense of where your book fits.

Good luck!

Kate

p.s. A bit of nitpicky copyediting nobody asked for: TITLES are given in all caps but series titles are not. So you’d say “for fans of THE LIGHTNING THIEF” [book tittle] or “for fans of Percy Jackson and the Olympians” [series title]. An agent won’t reject you for your capitalization, though. We’re all human!

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Dear Kate,

I’ve read some things where agents say to put all the metadata up front, like genre, word count, your logline, and comp titles, and then other agents say to start with the blurb and then put the metadata after. What do you recommend?

- Confused

Dear Confused,

I agree, it’s confusing! The short answer is that it doesn’t matter. As with the previous questioner, as long as you have the info the agent is looking for, you’re good. An agent may have their preferences but that doesn’t mean they’re going to reject your query because you gave the genre before the blurb or vice versa.

You’ve identified the key components of a successful query: genre and word count for sure, comp titles recommended, logline if you have it but not 100% necessary (having queried in both romance and literary fiction, I think a logline is more typical in genre fiction).

I’ve gone through my querying spreadsheet (I highly recommend a spreadsheet to help you keep track of everything!) and in my last round of querying, in 2020, I did a mix:

• personalization —> metadata —> blurb

• personalization —> blurb —> metadata

• blurb —> metadata —> personalization

I can’t say that I see any difference in my response rates depending on how I organized the query, as long as all the info was there.

If you have a personal connection to the agent, such as a referral, they requested your work at a conference or in an online pitch session, or they’ve read your work previously and invited you to query again, MAKE THAT YOUR VERY FIRST SENTENCE. If it’s a referral or they’ve requested your work, also put that in the subject line so they know right away. (It should go without saying, but don’t say you have a referral or that an agent requested your work if they haven’t actually done so.)

Good luck!

Kate

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Dear Kate,

Does a comp title have to be a book, or can I use a movie or TV show? This is for a novel. Thanks!

- Genre Fan

Dear Genre Fan,

Yes, you can use a movie or a TV show! This works especially well if you’re including two comps, and one is a book and the other is something else. If you only comp your book to non-books, it might be harder to show an agent (and eventually a publisher) that there’s a market of *readers* for your novel. But having a crossover can be a great way to showcase the flavor of your work and highlight its appeal.

You can use the same kind of language you’d use for a novel: “It will appeal to fans of TV SHOW and BOOK.” “It has the [attribute] of MOVIE and the [attribute] of BOOK.” “It’s like BOOK meets TV SHOW [and maybe with some other twist].”

The same general guidelines apply. It helps if the show is recent and if it’s clear why you’re choosing it. So many TV shows and movies are based on books, so see if the one you’re choosing was a book first and if that would make a better comp, too.

Good luck!

Kate

Stuck with an aspect of your writing? Gearing up to hit the query trenches? Let me know how I can help! Write to me here and I’ll answer your question in the next newsletter.

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Dear Kate,

Hello, for books to relate or compare my book to when pitching an agent - how do I find them!? Should I have read the books I’m referencing? I know they should be recent and popular but I usually don’t read the “next big thing” type of books.

- Anon

Dear Anon,

This is a great question to get into ALL ABOUT COMPS. *bells* *drums* *confetti* *a thousand authors sobbing all at once*

What are comps? Why do you need them? Where do you find them? How do you use them?

A comparison title, or comp, is perfectly defined in your question: It’s a book that relates to your manuscript and that you compare your work to when pitching your book to agents and editors.

We’ve talked on here about how genre tells an agent what section of the bookstore your manuscript would sit in. Fantasy? YA? Romance? Mystery? These are large and clumsy categories. But it’s nice to have some degree of organization, so when you’re scanning the shelves of “Book Club Fiction” (or whatever) you can browse what other books in that genre you might like.

Comp titles tell you not just the section of the bookstore your manuscript would go in, but what other books might sit next to it. These are books with similar content and a similar audience in mind. Imagine a bookseller making a display with your book and two or three others. “If you liked X, you’ll love Y!” “If you’ve just finished A, make B your next read!” A comp title tells your reader what other books your manuscript is in conversation with.

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Notice I didn’t say “What books your manuscript is like.”

Your book doesn’t have to be exactly the same as something already published! Your story is unique, and if you’re trying to be *just* like a current bestseller…it probably won’t feel very fresh and original anyway. I think we as authors can get too hung up on feeling like we have to make the EXACT match and it must be PERFECT or we’ll NEVER BE PUBLISHED, but what if you take some of the pressure off and imagine you’re recommending a book to a friend. You might say: it’s like that pirates book you loved, but in space. It’s like that family saga you devoured, but sadder/funnier/darker/with a twist. One of my favorite books is History of Wolves, by Emily Fridlund. Aimee Bender blurbed it as a “sledgehammer of pain.” I now think of that type of book I love as “sledgehammer” books. Wreck me, please. :-) Not every book like that will be exactly the same, obviously, but there’s a FEELING to the books that resonates with me, and the feeling or sense that a book evokes can be another point of comparison and connection. You can make it all about vibes.

I actually think one of the missteps querying authors often make is thinking that comp titles have to be big, flashy, popular books that sold millions of copies and that everyone has heard of. This isn’t true!

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If you don’t read “next big thing” books, or whatever is the current bestseller, then presumably your manuscript isn’t in conversation with those books and wouldn’t sit on the shelf with them — and so they wouldn’t make good comp titles anyway. Think about the books you read and love and that have most likely informed your own writing. Visualize what two or three books might sit with your book at a bookseller’s display. Imagine someone asking a librarian for book recommendations. What titles would be mentioned in the same breath as yours? People who love to read will read more than just the season’s shiny hit. It’s a great move to dig below the surface and choose books that you think are a good match, regardless of sales status.

In fact, agents often learn much more about your manuscript that way. If someone says “My sci fi book will appeal to fans of Star Wars,” that… doesn’t really tell us anything, right? At a certain point, a book/movie/TV show becomes SO popular that it no longer makes a good comp title because it kind of loses all meaning. “My YA dystopia will appeal to fans of THE HUNGER GAMES” isn’t a good comp because SO MANY people love that series series — it doesn’t really speak to what makes your manuscript a great read. Sure, we all want our books to sell well. But “millions of people will love my book” doesn’t feel super realistic for marketing purposes.

An agent gets zillions of submissions. Having a comp title that shows you’re well-versed in your genre and understand the market is much more informative than picking the same “it” book that everyone else is picking this season. What other YA dystopias connect with yours? Can you chose a historical romance besides the Bridgerton series? A twisted psychological thriller that’s not GONE GIRL? What else might someone who knows and loves your genre be excited to read more of?

This isn’t to say that you can’t pick a big seller. If you do, it helps to get a little more specific about why you’re choosing it, and/or cross it with another title to illuminate something more about your book and its place in the market. GONE GIRL in 1890s New York. BIG LITTLE LIES set amidst the rumor-mill of a small West Texas town. The lyricism of LUCY BY THE SEA, the heartache of LUSTER— I’m just making things up but my point is that I’m trying to add something about each of these titles that hopefully shows the agent why I’m making the comparison. Again, you don’t have to choose a big title. Your knowledge of your genre, and your excitement for your work, will come through in your choice of whatever feels genuinely resonant with your manuscript.

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So, how to find these perfect comps?

One thing is to just keep reading as much as you can. If you’re reading in your genre, you can continue to find books however you usually do. Online? Book reviews? Word of mouth? Bookseller recommendations at your local bookstore? Ask a librarian? Talk to friends? All of these are valid, fruitful avenues. There are also tools and searches that can help you get more specific.

This Substack came out of a talk I gave called “Ask an Agented Author,” which was part of a grant I received from the Bronx Council on the Arts. In that talk, I shared some additional resources that I’ll repeat here:

• Readers Advisory tools: Readers advisory connects books to readers and readers to books. Google your local library system + “readers advisory,” check out your local library system’s databases, or speak with a librarian and they’ll help connect you with a database that can show you book recommendations. Here are some that I like:

  • NoveLIST

  • What Should I Read Next?

  • Library Thing

• Goodreads: This is full of lists of books based on theme, content, subgenre, etc. Look up a book and then scroll to see what lists it’s a part of, and what other books readers have read that are similar. Look for the following categories:

  • Listopia

  • “Readers Also Enjoyed”

• Amazon: I’m not recommending you get all your book recs from an algorithm, but as with Goodreads, you can search for a book you like and then see what else is similar. Check out these categories:

  • “Also Viewed”

  • “Sponsored Products”

  • “Frequently Bought Together”

• Do some research:

  • Book reviews

  • Trade reviews in your genre

  • Backmatter material —> when you finish a book, publishers will often include “You might like” sections and similar titles by the same author and/or publisher.

• Choose key terms: Take a book you like. Maybe it’s one of your comp titles. Maybe it could be a comp title but it’s too popular, it’s 10 years old, it’s not quite popular enough, whatever. See what key terms are used to categorize the novel. Then you can search for books that have those same terms. This can also help give you a sense of your genre/subgenre. I swear that for the longest time I thought I was writing a literary thriller, because my previous manuscripts have been literary thrillers. Then I looked at the metadata describing my comp titles and realized… I’m writing psychological fiction. It’s not a thriller! Which is why, when I was reading psychological thrillers to find more recent comp titles, I kept feeling like nothing was a match. Check out:

  • The copyright page

  • Amazon/Goodreads/an online bookstore that will list its categories

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As far as whether you have to read your comps… I mean… kinda?

It can feel like choosing comps is just ticking off some random box that agents want to see, but I promise they aren’t asking for this piece of metadata just to be difficult. It does illuminate something about your manuscript, and it can really help situate your work, excite the agent, and make your query stand out.

I’d start by accumulating a list of possible titles, following the suggestions I’ve outlined above, and then you can read/skim the beginnings and see if you’re intrigued enough to keep going. Amazon often has a free sample available to download or read online, and you can see what your local library has available (and you can request that your library order books, too!). I’m not saying you have to go out and buy a hundred books to read cover to cover. Ideally you already have some familiarity with your genre and enjoy reading new books coming out that are somewhat similar to yours, and can start to narrow it down from there.

Side note: Comp titles are different from the books you might want to use to personalize your query letter. Those are books an agent worked on, so you might start off your query saying “I loved X novel you represented and hope you might be interested in my take on Y.” For that, again, yeah it helps to have actually read the novel so you know you’re not completely making up a connection that doesn’t exist. And it might not be a good fit if it turns out you don’t actually like the books that agent represents! But of course it takes a lot of time to personalize each query, especially if you’re also reading a book or two for each agent. For that I do think you can read the blurb, check out some reviews, skim the beginning, and see if you can pull together a sentence or two making the connection to your own work. Agents have just as strong a bullshit-o-meter as the rest of us and will be able to see through false attempts to force a connection. But we’re all doing the best that we can with the time that we have.

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Some agents say you don’t need to have comp titles to query them. Some say it’s absolutely essential. I think a comp title or two can help you summarize your novel and get across a great deal in a limited amount of space. If you can come up with a title or two, I really do think it helps. If it is the absolute sticking point and you cannot come up with anything, you can always leave it off and see if you get any nibbles without it. These are, as always, guidelines — not hard and fast rules.

When you get an agent and prepare a package to go on submission to publishers, you’ll again need to have comp titles to send to editors. It’s a cycle that never ends, so it helps to get used to these conversations now and to be on the lookout for possible leads. I hope this helps, and good luck!

Kate

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That high-pitched wailing you hear? That’s the collective cries of authors everywhere trying to figure out how to write a synopsis.

When I hosted Ask an Agented Author, one of the first questions in the Q&A was about how to write a synopsis and where to find examples. And when I began sharing on Twitter that I was starting this Substack, the very first comment I got was: “Can you do one on synopses?”

So here it is. THE GREAT SYNOPSIS SUBSTACK. Or, how to summarize your entire novel without losing your mind.  

What is a synopsis?

A synopsis is a short document that summarizes your ENTIRE book. Including the ending. Including spoilers. Unlike a blurb that hooks the reader and makes them want to pick up your book and read on, a synopsis shows your reader all the key points in your book so they don't have to read it.

Different agents may ask for different lengths. It's common to have a one page synopsis, a two page synopsis, sometimes a three page synopsis (but I've never seen anyone ask for longer than that). This is generally in the 200-300 word range, or the 300-500 word range.

I usually write two so I have options available depending on what people ask for, but mostly because I’m an overwriter by nature and find it easier, personally, to write a longer version and then fight like hell to cut it down. (If this doesn’t apply to you, consider yourself lucky and ignore.)

I already wrote a whole @#$%^ book. Why do I need to write more?

Synopses started making more sense to me — and less like yet another aggravating publishing hoop to jump through — when I started to understand who actually reads them and why.

Agents:

Agents may ask for a synopsis because they want to be able to skim a summary before they commit to reading an entire manuscript. We can talk elsewhere about how overloaded agents are and what a bad system this is, but it's the reality we have to live with. It's entirely possible to have a sh*tty synopsis and a fantastic novel. But if there are major plot problems in a synopsis, it can indicate that the novel has problems as well, and an agent may want to know that before they decide whether to spend hours reading.

There are also certain genre conventions an agent will expect your book to follow, if those are the genres you’re writing in. If you’re querying a romance and the characters all die in the end, or a mystery that doesn’t get solved, or a sci-fi thriller that—surprise!—turns out to have all been a dream…an agent probably wants to know if a book is a non-starter before they’re 300 pages in.

If this sounds negative, remember that an agent may get really excited to find out where your story goes. It’s an opportunity to show off, in a short amount of space, how great your work is.

Editors:

When your agent sends your manuscript to an editor, the editor will often get what's called second reads, when they pass your work around to colleagues in their office and try to drum up support before taking it to acquisitions. Again, everyone is inundated with manuscripts, so they may want to get the gist of your book before they commit to reading the whole thing.

Or, I have to assume, they get excited by the synopsis and give the green light to go ahead even if they don’t have time to read the full manuscript themselves.

I’ve had this personally happen when I sold How to Fall, an early romance novel I wrote under my pen name. I was glad I’d taken the time to write and revise my synopsis, so I wasn’t scrambling when suddenly an editor asked my agent to send it to her!

The rest of your publishing team:

Even after a publisher takes on your novel, more people will continue to work on it. Think of your synopsis as a little bundle of your novel that someone in sales, or marketing, or the art department might read to get a sense of what the book is about. All those people aren’t going to read your whole book cover-to-cover, but they’ll need to know something about it. There are other internal forms you may wind up filling out to convey this information — different publishers do it differently. But again, it’s helpful to already have the synopsis handy so you can copy and paste the information as needed.

What should a synopsis include?

• Setting.

• Main characters.

• Inciting incident.

• What happens next?

• Midpoint.

• Is there another turning point?

• Climax.

• Resolution.

Maybe your narrative doesn't follow all of those components exactly. Regardless, you can see how a synopsis lays out the whole arc of a story. You don't need all your secondary characters or subplots, just the most important pieces.

Tips and Strategies:

• Write your synopsis in third person present tense, regardless of how the novel is written.

• Stick to one point of view, even if your synopsis contains multiple viewpoints. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it can make your life easier. Phrases like “Little does she know…” or “Meanwhile…” can allow you to fold in information without going all in on a second character or subplot.

• Start by brainstorming everything that comes to mind as a key moment in the narrative. Then think about what’s truly essential and pare it down from there.

• Write down the inciting incident (what changes your protagonist’s “normal world” and gets the narrative rolling?). Then write the climax. Then think about how your character gets from Point A to Point B, in the fewest steps possible.

• I write out a dry, dull account of what happens (yawn). Then, I look at why it happens. Regardless of your genre, a synopsis conveys an emotional journey—why does your character do what they do? What are their motivations? Why will the reader care? Once I’ve gotten the basic plot points down, I rewrite my synopsis with an eye toward emotion, not just “this happens then this happens then this happens the end.”

• Imagine you’re telling someone what your book is about, including the ending. What do you include? What do you leave out?

• Have someone read your synopsis who’s read your novel.

• Have someone read your synopsis who hasn’t read your novel.

• Give yourself plenty of time to write and revise. This isn’t something to rush or bang out in just a few hours! You may need to come back to it, rewrite, and edit as needed. This is TOTALLY NORMAL and not a sign that you don’t know what you’re doing or your book is crap and you need to fling the whole thing out the window, take a hammer to your laptop, and move to Fiji.

• Of course you want your synopsis to be well written — it’s still a reflection of your writing. But it doesn’t have to be artistic, especially if the artistry takes up valuable real estate or detracts from the work the document has to do. It’s more important to get the job done.

• Your book is not too complex, too deep, too original, or too brilliant to summarize. Sorry! If you’re very sure you absolutely cannot write a synopsis that conveys what your story is about, you may not be interested in doing the kind of promo and marketing traditional publishing (with an agent and publisher) will want to pursue. That’s okay — self publishing is a great option. But you’ll still want to figure out how to describe your book to capture a reader’s attention.

  ---

  More resources:

• https://jerichowriters.com/how-to-write-a-novel-synopsis-with-an-example/

• https://www.janefriedman.com/how-to-write-a-novel-synopsis/

• https://www.carlywatters.com/2013/11/04/how-to-write-a-book-synopsis

• https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-novel-synopsis-step-by-step-guide#step-1-create-a-short-overview

Share in the comments if there’s another site you recommend and I’ll keep a running list going!

The best way to get better at writing synopses is to practice doing them. Practice for the book you’re working on now. Practice for a book you’re reading, or a movie you’ve watched. Give yourself plenty of time and plenty of drafts. And let me know if you have follow-up questions about synopses, or anything else.

You got this.

Happy writing!

Kate

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