What time of year to query?
"Should I avoid the holidays?"
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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.
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.
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