What agents ask for, incl. sample pages and prologues
and how to paste, format, and send 'em
Hi, I’m Kate. Ask an Author is an advice column for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future response! Looking to work one-on-one? Find me at Broad Editorial for additional support.
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.
Do I literally just paste it below the query letter, even if it’s long? (My first 3 chapters aren’t short!)
If it ends somewhere in the middle of a line or the middle of a scene, should I cut the scene shorter? Later?
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!
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.
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!!!
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.
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
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.