I think I speak for a lot of people – or at least for everyone I’ve spoken to this year – when I say that 2017 was not a great year for productivity. My one and only blog post in 2017 was a bit of a bummer, and while I liked it and may write more like it in 2018, I want to focus on moving on, blogging more often, and not letting the bastards get me down.

My second blog post of 2017 is also my final one of the year. It’s the one writers always look forward to and dread simultaneously, My Year in Queries! Long-time readers of Glass Cases know the gist by now, but as a reminder:

• I read and respond to every query I receive with these exceptions:
  • Pre-queries, aka emails writers send to ask if they can query. The answer is always YES if the agent is open to queries, and if they aren’t they’ll say so on their website.
  • Not addressed to me.
  • Sent as an attachment.
  • Mass queries, whether I’m BCC’d or one of many who are CC’d.
  • Non-Query. I don’t recommend querying a book you already published (that means self-pub too). It’s unlikely an agent will be able to re-sell those for you (please refer here and here for more info). But, sometimes I get queries for published books and I legitimately don’t know if it’s a query or a press release. Those are the ones I ignore.

In those 5 categories, I received 380 queries.

In 2017, I also closed to queries over the summer. It’s something I hardly ever do so I made sure to give writers a month’s notice on my agency website, Twitter, and Publisher’s Marketplace. I updated all bios to make sure it gave the dates I’d be closed to queries. While closed, I received 203 queries that were deleted unread.

Finally, in 2017, I received 291 queries in genres/markets I do not represent. I’m not very strict about this one. If something just wasn’t a preferred sub-genre or not usually my thing, I did not count it. For “does not represent,” I meant only the genres/markets specified on the agency website. For me that means:

• Nonfiction of any kind (including memoir)
• Picture Books/Chapter Books
• Inspirational/spiritual novels
• Category romance and/or erotica
• Screenplays

OK! Now let’s get to the 100% awesome, definitely-want-to-read-love-and-answer queries. (Note: Remember these are queries only – aka “the slush pile.” Requests from conferences, contests, referrals, or previous Revise & Resubmits were not counted.)

January: Total: 441; Requests: 1

February: Total: 407; Requests: 7

March: Total: 393; Requests: 5

April: Total: 336; Requests: 8

May: Total: 371; Requests: 7

June: Total: 327; Requests: 9

July & August: CLOSED (but received 203 anyway)

September: Total: 333; Requests: 10 (as of 9/15)

October: Total: 410; Requests: 5

November: Total: 426; Requests: 6

December: Total: 329; Requests: 4

Total Queries in 2017: 3,976

Total Requests from Queries: 62

Total R&Rs Requested in 2017: 16

*Last year someone asked me how many requests turn into Revise & Resubmits rather than flat-out rejections, so I did my best to keep track this year. Hoping to receive those revisions in 2018!*

Most Requested: Adult upmarket/literary focusing on female characters, complexities of relationships, and/or involving psychological suspense; YA contemporary from marginalized voices that aren’t issue books, but rather familiar stories with fresh perspectives; YA sci-fi with a fun ensemble cast and is not dystopian.

What I Wish I Saw More: Once again, literary/upper MG, preferably magical in some way but contemporary/realistic would be great too! Also, more YA horror, please.

Total New Clients Signed in 2017: 2 – Laura Pohl (YA sci-fi) and Alyson Greene (YA thriller).

*Note: Signing 2 or 3 new clients in a year isn’t that rare for me, but 2017 was a semi-intentional quiet year, so I’d love to see this number double or triple in 2018!

***

OK. So what does all of this mean? Well, it means I received more queries per month than in 2016, but since I closed in the middle of the year, I received fewer overall. It also means that of the 3,976 queries I received, 874 of them did not follow the rules, which makes the more realistic number of queries of I received in 2017 3,102.

If you’re one of those 3,102 queriers you should know how much agents appreciate writers like you! Even though we can’t take on everyone, and often can’t even take on a fraction of what we end up liking, we’re still grateful for a good query and a writer who does everything right. I hope you all end up finding agents, and if you’re among those I requested or asked for an R&R, I hope to hear from you again!

As always, remember that when agents open your query, we’re looking for reasons to request your manuscript. We don’t want to reject anything. We just have to sometimes. Rejections aren’t personal and they are very, very rarely because a book is “bad.” This is a business and our responses are business decisions. We’re still rooting for your successes even if they don’t end up being with us.

And with that… Goodbye forever, 2017! Bring on 2018.

It’s that time of year again… when writers see the end-of-year stats from agents and feel overwhelmed. I’m sure this post will be no different, though I will try to reassure you up front that these numbers are not as scary as they seem!

As always, keep in mind the following stats are from unsolicited queries only – a.k.a. “the slush pile.” Any requests made at conferences, from contests, referrals, or previous R&Rs were not part of the tally. So, without further ado, My Year in Queries!

January: Total: 439; Requests: 6

February: Total: 383; Requests: 5

March: Total: 383; Requests: 5

April: Total: 349; Requests: 4

May: Total: 287; Requests: 3

June: Total: 256; Requests: 6

July: Total: 282; Requests: 3

August: Total: 300; Requests: 9 (Woo!)

September: Total: 294; Requests: 3

October: Total: 298; Requests: 6

November: Total: 396; Requests: 2

December: Total (as of 12/28): 188; Requests: 3

Total Queries in 2015: 3,855

Total Requests from Queries: 55

Most Requested Genre: YA contemporary (28 out of 55)

Genres I Wish I Saw More: Literary MG and Upmarket/Contemporary Adult Fiction

Total New Clients from Queries: 6

Total New Clients in 2015: 7 – Lilly Barels (YA, query); Tracey Neithercot (YA, query); Dalanie Beach (YA, conference); Jackie Jacobi (YA, query); Evan James Roskos (MG/YA, query); Jan Saenz (Adult/WF, query); Miranda Suri (Adult/UF, query)

I’m especially proud of how many new clients I signed this year for a couple reasons:

1. I signed more new clients this year than I have in any other year, and nearly doubled my client list, which was one of my goals for 2015. Hooray!
2. 2015 was a bit of a year for me, both personally and professionally. Not that it was all bad. Some of it was incredibly, unbelievably wonderful. It was just a lot. So, it makes me happy that despite capital-L Life happening all over this year, I still found some amazing new talent to work with, and I cannot wait to bring their projects into 2016!

Some things to keep in mind, lest that Total Queries number is ringing in your head:

• That total includes all the queries I receive in genres I don’t represent. In 2016, I’m going to be better about including that number as part of my stats, as I imagine it will make the total appear far less threatening.
• I ask for R&Rs a lot. (Revise & Resubmit) That means I’m not signing quite as many clients at the fastest rate, but I am actively working with authors with the intention of offering representation. If I ask for an R&R, it means I really, really want to offer representation, but I need more confidence in the writing before I commit. My goal isn’t to make writers wait around for me, and if they sign with someone else instead of revising, that sucks for me. My hope, however, is that those 2015 R&Rs will turn into revisions I *love* and those authors will become 2016 clients!
• Every query I receive gets tallied in these stats. Including, unfortunately, the few I delete without reading. I read and respond to 99.9% of my queries, but sometimes queries are so off base that there are simply no words. These include:
  • Mass queries. If I’m obviously BCC’d, or one of 100 agents CC’d on a query, I’m not going to bother responding.
  • Pre-queries. These are the email equivalents of someone asking, “Can I ask you a question?” The query itself IS a question, so just ask!
  • Queries sent as attachment. No, complete stranger, I will not open that unsolicited attachment or click on that weird link.
  • Queries addressed to someone else. Copy & paste fails happen, but I will assume you did not mean to query me, sorry.
  • The “Is This a Query?” Query. If you’re querying a self-published novel, make sure you’re including sales figures and what you hope an agent will add to your writing career. Do not just email agents a publicity sheet about your self-published novel. If a book has a cover and blurbs, I assume it’s already published and that your “query” is marketing spam.
• Even if I represent the genre, the query looks great, and the project has potential, I simply can’t take on everything. I keep my list small so I can devote my time equally to all of my clients who need it. This means I have to pass on very good projects and hope they land with other amazing agents instead. Do not take it personally if you get a rejection. It’s always a business decision based on our time and expertise and skill set, and is rarely because your book is “bad.” Agents want you to succeed even if we, personally, can’t be the ones to take on your projects.

If you received a form rejection, personalized rejection, or any sort of response from me on your query, it means you did everything right! Be proud of that, and even though agents can’t always send individual Thank You notes, consider this a huge THANK YOU for following guidelines and making the submissions process run smoothly! We appreciate you.

Now go enjoy your holidays, take a break from the book world for a bit, and we’ll see you in 2016!!

 

Hello, everyone!

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

This will be my last post of 2012, so let me take the opportunity to say THANK YOU. Seriously. Thank you all for reading and helping this blog continue for another year! I’ll be back in 2013 with more of your brilliant stories to share and more posts about writing, pop culture, and pictures of corgis.

Last year, I decided to choose three months at random to do an average of the queries I received in 2011. This year I did inventory of every month, cutting December off on the 21st because that’s when the office closed for the holidays. (Though, as of today I have 20 queries in my inbox, including two that were sent on Christmas Day. I’ll answer those in January.)

So, because writers love stats (right?), I present… my year in queries!

Note: These stats were compiled from ONLY emailed, unsolicited queries. Or, as the kids call it, the slush pile. Requests I had made at conferences, from blog/Twitter contests, and referrals were not counted among the following totals. Requested revisions for manuscripts I had read in 2011 were also not counted since they fall under solicited submissions. I receive maybe ten queries a year via regular mail, so I didn’t count those either. (Thank you, writers who follow directions and send their queries via email!)

Second Note: I answer every query I receive with the exception of the following (which were also not counted in the totals):

– If the query was addressed to more than one person.
Mass queries only show that a writer has put no thought into who they want representing their work or, in a best-case scenario, is trying to take an easy way out. If you want writing to be your career, take the time to care about it.

– Pre-queries (emails from writers who ask if they can query me.)
I don’t answer these because they are pointless and unprofessional. The query itself determines whether I’ll be interested in reading your book. Asking me if you can ask me to read your book is redundant, so I don’t bother answering. Just query me.

– Query sent as an attachment with nothing in the body of the email.
Do you open unsolicited attachments from complete strangers? Neither do agents.

– Queries not addressed to me.
These could often be an innocent mistake, but if you address me by a different agent’s name, I’m going to assume you meant to query them, not me.

– Unsure whether a self-pubbed author was querying their novel, or if they were just promoting their self-pubbed book.

OK, on to the stats!

January:
Queries Received: 430
Manuscripts Requested: 12
Genres Requested: Contemporary YA (4); YA Mystery (1); YA Fantasy (1); Adult Literary Supernatural/Dark Fairytale (2); Adult Literary Fiction (2); Adult Sci-Fi (1)

February:
Queries Received: 388
Manuscripts Requested: 14
Genres Requested: YA Fantasy (3); Adult Fantasy (1); YA Mystery (1); YA Sci-fi (1); Adult Magican Realism (1); YA Magical Realism (1); YA gothic (1); MG magical realism (1); Adult Dark Mystery (1)

March:
Queries Received: 373
Manuscripts Requested: 4
Genres Requested: YA steampunk (1); YA magical realism; YA paranormal (1); Adult literary fiction (1)

April:
Queries Received: 346
Manuscripts Requested: 5
Genres Requested: YA dark fantasy (1); YA contemporary (2); Adult literary fiction (1); Adult commercial fiction (1)

May:
Queries Received: 344
Manuscripts Requested: 6
Genres Requested: Adult literary fiction (1); YA fantasy (2); YA contemp. (2); Adult sci-fi mystery (1)

June:
Queries Received: 339
Manuscripts Requested: 4
Genres Requested: Adult Dark Fantasy (1); Adult Memoir (1); YA sci-fi (1); Adult horror (1)

July:
Queries Received: 366
Manuscripts Requested: 6
Genres Requested: YA contemporary (3); YA fairytale (1); YA horror (1); YA sci-fi (1)

August:
Queries Received: 330
Manuscripts Requested: 5
Genres Requested: Adult Mystery (2); YA Mystery (2); YA Horror (1)

September:
Queries Received: 298
Manuscripts Requested: 5
Genres Requested: Adult Urban Fantasy (1); Adult Sci-Fi (1); Adult Literary Mystery (2); YA Contemp. (1)

October:
Queries Received: 300
Manuscripts Requested: 1
Genres Requested: Contemporary YA (1)

November:
Queries Received: 248
Manuscripts Requested: 7
Genres Requested: YA thriller (1); YA fantasy (1); YA contemp. (1); Adult Literary Fiction (3); Adult Magical Realism (1)

December (1-21)
Queries Received: 152
Manuscripts Requested: 2
Genres Requested: Women’s Fiction (1); Adult Suspense (1)

Total queries received in 2012: 3,914

Total manuscripts requested from those queries: 71

Most requested genres: YA Contemporary and Adult Literary Fiction

Second most requested genres: Adult Literary Mystery/Suspense and YA Horror

Least requested genres: MG and Adult Memoir

Total clients signed from the 2012 slush pile: 2

Total clients signed in 2012: 7
(1 from Cupid’s Blind Speed Dating Contest contest; 1 from the Midwest Writer’s Conference; 1 referral; and 4 from queries, two of which were R&Rs that had carried over from 2011, but officially signed in early 2012.)

These stats can be a bit daunting for writers whose queries are currently sitting in inboxes or who haven’t yet started querying. Keep in mind that agents receive queries for genres they don’t represent, trends they can’t sell (yep, I still got my fair share of vampire and werewolf romances in 2012!), and books from writers who put no thought into whom they were querying. There are hundreds and hundreds of writers out there who have brilliant books in search for an agent, but when you see numbers that reach almost 4,000 total queries received, remember your competition may not be as fierce as it appears.

But I’ll repeat – there are hundreds and hundreds of excellent writers out there, but agents can’t have a client list that accommodates all of them. We have to reject good writers and good books all the time and trust that there are other agents with more room on their lists to give them proper attention.

To any writers getting ready to query, or re-query, this year – good luck and don’t be scared! Writers tend to ask about how to “avoid the slush pile,” but really the slush pile is just what agents call queries. It’s where we find talent. The slush pile is a crowded place, but it’s not a bad place to be. New agents depend on it to grow their own lists and established agents continue to use it to find new clients. Hope to see you there at some point in 2013… if you think I’m a good fit for you, of course.

Hi everyone. Hope you all enjoyed the holidays! I’m squeezing in one more post in 2011. This year was my first *full* year of being an agent, so I thought the best way to commemorate this was with data collecting and spreadsheets. At the beginning of the year, I decided to choose three months at random and do a tally of every query I received. I’ll spare you from the VERY SCIENTIFIC (not really) charts and day-to-day totals, and just give a brief overview.

(Note: These results are from emailed queries only. Thankfully, I don’t receive many snail mail queries, and hope this stays true in 2012.)

In January 2011, I received a total of 442 queries. This is probably the most number of queries I received within a single month all year. January is a big query month. You have everyone who made it their New Year’s resolution to get an agent, you have the NaNoWriMo writers who took December to revise, and you have your usual queriers who just felt like querying.

Contrary to popular belief, January queries are not automatically bad, rushed, or even unwanted. I ended up requesting two manuscripts sent on the same day that month, and that day was January 1. Despite the optimistic start to the year, of those 442 queries, I requested a total of 8 manuscripts. Which means 434 people received a form rejection.

The next month I tallied was July. This is a slow month for obvious reasons. It’s the middle of summer. Writers are busy writing what they’re going to query, or they are vacation. Also, many agencies close to queries beginning in July, so it’s probably easier for writers to just resume duties in the fall. In July, I received a total of 388 queries, again including a post-holiday day of requesting two manuscripts in one day’s batch. Of the 388, I requested 11 manuscripts and sent 377 form rejections.

Finally, November – the last complete month of the year, work-wise. I received a total of 363 queries, the lowest total, but requested 12 manuscripts. November was also the month in which I received the highest number of queries in one day: 34. The lowest number I’ve received in one day’s batch was 7 (occurring once each month).

Random observation: Tuesdays and Wednesday are the biggest query days, while Saturday and Sunday are the slowest.

Using these samples, I’d say I average about 400 queries a month (4,800 per year) and request about 10 manuscripts per month just from the slush pile. This figure does not include any revisions I had asked for from previous months, contest winners, or requests from conferences. In case you’re wondering whether the requests were fulls vs. partials, I honestly didn’t keep track. But! I’d say 8 times out of 10 I request the full. It saves time in the long run and I can always stop reading if it comes apart. I request partials sometimes – most often if I’m on the fence about a particular premise (but was intrigued by writing), or if I love a premise (but not sure how the writing will be). Full disclosure: I may go back to requesting mostly partials due to an out-of-control reading pile that accrued around November.

To give you a picture of how many requests result in an offer of representation, out of the 100+ manuscripts I requested in 2011, I took on a total of 4 new clients, only 3 of whom came from unsolicited queries. (Admittedly I had offered on two others but lost them in a battle.) I officially started building my list in April 2010, and eager as I was to find clients, I took on a total of 8 out of a similar – though slightly lower – number of queries and requests.

For those who may not know, my *other* full time job at Curtis Brown is working in the foreign rights department. I love working in this department, but sometimes this means I end up passing on projects I really really like – but don’t love – just because I know my time is divided right now. I wouldn’t be able to give that person adequate attention. So, I keep my roster of authors purposely small so that I’m able to give proper time and care to my clients equally. By the end of 2012 I hope to raise my number of clients to an even 20. I won’t make it an official goal; I just think it’ll be nice. Obviously I’ll have to receive worthwhile submissions. Hint, hint… 🙂

While I chose these months at random (beginning, middle, end), the interesting thing I noticed in 2011 queries was that as the number of queries received decreased, the number of requested manuscripts increased. I take this to mean that more writers are doing research before they send. Rather than submitting blindly, more people are taking the time to realize I might not be for them. Meanwhile, those who do query me know exactly what I’m looking for or know why I’d be interested in their story. I hope this, too, remains true for 2012. Though, as you noticed, my reading pile got bigger and bigger at the end of the year. But, I’d rather take the time to read 20 amazing manuscripts than take a few hours sorting through a folder of lackluster premises, genres I don’t represent, or (worse) vampires.

So that was 2011 in a nutshell. As I begin Year #2 of being an agent, and I add more clients and book deals to my belt o’ publishing, I can only hope that one day I’ll look back and say “remember when I only received 100 queries a week?” Until then, thanks readers & writers for making my first full year as an agent pretty darn great.