Hi everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your holidays. This will be my last post of 2013, which means it’s time for my annual end-of-year query stats.
I dubbed this year the year of ALL THE CHANGES, and my career was no exception. In April I closed to queries to prepare for a career change. I moved from an assistant-level position with Curtis Brown, Ltd. to a full-time agent role with Bradford Literary Agency. Back in June, I blogged about moving to Bradford and included my query stats from January to April 2013.
I re-opened to queries on June 10, so for the purposes of this blog post, the stats I’m using will be from June 10 – December 22. As a reminder, the stats are from unsolicited queries only – aka “the slush pile.” Any requests made at conferences, through blog/Twitter contests, or via referrals weren’t part of the tally. So, without further ado:
June 10-30:
Total: 272
Requests: 4
Genres Requested: Women’s fiction, Urban Fantasy, Magical Realism, MG fantasy
July:
Total: 391
Requests: 4
Genres Requested: Women’s fiction, Literary Fiction, Urban Fantasy, YA Fantasy
August:
Total: 320
Requests: 3
Genres Requested: Adult Sci-fi, MG Horror, YA Fantasy
September:
Total: 303
Requests: 8
Genres Requested: Literary Fiction (2), Adult Paranormal Thriller, Adult Sci-fi, YA Paranormal, YA Thriller, YA Fantasy, YA Sci-fi
October:
Total: 297
Requests: 5
November:
Total: 281
Requests: 5
Genres Requested: Adult Sci-fi (2), YA contemporary (2), Adult Magical Realism
December (1-22):
Total: 150
Requests: 0
Total Queries Received Since June 10: 2,024
Total Manuscript Requests: 29
Most Requested Genres: Literary fiction, Magical Realism, and Sci-fi
Total Offers of Rep from Queries: 0 – Don’t be alarmed by this number. More often than not, if I’m interested in a manuscript, I ask for a revision (“R&R”) before offering representation. This is even more common if the manuscript comes from an unsolicited query.
Total New Clients since June: 1 – The fabulous Gina Miel Heron, a woman’s fiction author I met at a conference in 2011 and kept in contact with while she finished her manuscript and then, later, the R&R I asked for in 2012. Sometimes it’s a long road to representation!
Total Queries Received in 2013 (minus hiatus): 3,206
- Mass queries (addressed to more than one person – and, yes, we can tell when you BCC us).
- Pre-queries (emails asking whether they can query).
- Queries sent as attachments or links, with nothing else in the body of the email.
- Queries addressed to someone else (even if it’s a copy and paste error, I’ll assume you meant to query that other person instead).
- Possible query for a self-pubbed book, but possibly just promoting a self-pubbed book. If I can’t tell if what you’re sending is, in fact, a query, I won’t answer it.
Sarah LaPolla 
Fascinating! It's so interesting to see this breakdown. Thank you for sharing.
LikeLike
I am very pleased with the above post,really it is good one pigeon net manufacturers
LikeLike
Agreed. It IS fascinating to see your query stats! Thanks so much for sharing this. And congrats on all the great changes.
LikeLike
Happy New Year, Sarah! It's fascinating to see your query stats.
LikeLike
A breakdown of queries recieved in genres you represent/don't represent would be interesting. It shocks me that hundreds of writers would query people who don't represent their genre. It makes no sense. 😛
LikeLike
Happy New Year to you and your loved ones and best wishes in finding in 2014 great new clients to represent and to have your current clients get their novels accepted by editors. About 1-2 years ago you posted a few posts how to write YA fiction and they were very helpful.
LikeLike