Curb Your Insecurity: Tips on Good Submission Etiquette

There are plenty of querying and publishing “how-to’s” that provide authors with great information about how to find, query and submit to an agent. What is not always so clear is what you should do after your manuscript has been submitted to prospective literary agents. Waiting is often the hardest part of the submission process. That is the time when insecurity can rear its ugly head, and authors may suddenly feel that they must do something, but what they do is actually worse than not doing anything.

First, I’d like to clear up a misperception about literary agents. It is often said literary agents are in the business not for the money but because they love what they are doing. That is certainly true. While some agents are lucky enough to work at an agency that provides a salary, quite a number of us only see a paycheck after we’ve sold a book. And while we love what we are doing, this should not be construed as we are working or willing to work for free.

Consider the concept, time = money. The time we spend on book projects – whether it is combing through slush piles, reading submissions, providing edits to a client, or any number of activities we must undertake to sell a book – is considered our “capital” investment in our business.  And let’s face it, publishing, which includes agenting, is a business. Many authors, especially debut authors, write their novels while maintaining a job that pays the bills. Their writing activity may be viewed as a “hobby,” since they are not compensated for it, which in turn, makes it easy to mistake an agent’s job for his or her “hobby” as well. After all, it looks like we’re doing it for free. But since time is our investment, it is a very precious, limited commodity for agents. We have to be selective on what to invest our time on. So as an author looking for representation, you should be mindful of an agent’s time. If not, you risk putting your foot in your mouth, or worse, shooting yourself in the foot.

To help you avoid doing either, I’ve put together the following ten tips for good submission etiquette:

1. Don’t “shotgun” your submission. In other words, don’t simply send out your submission to a large number of random agents, hoping to ensure some positive responses. This wastes both your and the agents’ time.  You’ll have more success and make a more favorable impression by doing your research to make sure the agents you are approaching are appropriate for your project.  
   
   
   
   
   
2. Really follow submission guidelines and how the agent wants to be contacted. And if an agent isn’t accepting unsolicited submissions, don’t discount or ignore this by querying anyway. It shows disrespect and, at the very least, that you can’t follow directions, which is a red flag. It hints at a potential difficulty you might have in taking editing directions.
   
   
3. Don’t “nudge” or follow up on your submission too soon. I once received a follow up from an author after only 2 weeks. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get an answer. You might even get a response shortly after, passing on your book. Why? It could be that the agent happened to get to your submission, and it was just a coincidence. Or it could be that the agent decided it was better to let it go, since you seemed to need an answer so quickly. Or it could mean that alarm bells went off, and the agent wondered if you are impatient now, what happens once he takes on your project? 
   
   
   
   
   
4. Wait at least 3-4 months before your follow-up on your query or submission. Please believe me when I say it takes a lot of time to go through submissions. At Kimberley Cameron & Associates, we look at every submission. It may be as little as 10 pages or as many as 50, but our agency policy is to give each of them thoughtful consideration. And our agents are required to answer every one of them, whether in a form letter or a personal note, which adds even more time.
   
   
5. Don’t make demands either in your query or follow-up, whether it’s for a specific time frame to respond or confirmation that your submission was received. It raises a big red flag and shows a  lack of respect for the agent’s time. Consider how many submissions an agent receives in a day or a week. For some, it may be a dozen, while others, it’s several hundred. If you think they’re slow to respond now, imagine how much longer it would be if agents had to also confirm receipt of submissions to authors.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Don’t burn bridges by responding to an agent who passed on your project with a defensive retort or ask for editorial suggestions. If suggestions are provided, consider yourself among the fortunate. It means that the agent was willing to spend some her capital to help you out, so take those suggestions to heart. If you respond defensively, it not only makes you look unprofessional, it pretty much ends any potential for future contact, which you may regret after you’ve done a major revision or written another book.
   
   
7. If general comments, or reasons why your project was passed on, are offered, don’t respond requesting detailed editorial recommendations, or worse, request a copy of your manuscript back with the agent’s notes.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Notify agents only when you have been offered representation. There is no need to let us now that you’ve submitted to other agents (this is pretty much assumed) or when other agents request full manuscripts.  
   
   
9. Be honest about your intentions. When you are offered representation, it is perfectly acceptable to ask for time to notify other agents, just be honest about it and your intentions for doing so. One author I offered representation to told me that she had every intention of signing with me, only to find out she’d been using my offer to leverage offers from other agents. She kept me hanging on until she secured her “dream” agent.





10. Be professional on social media and don’t solicit or pitch agents by commenting on posts or tweeting at them unless it’s part of an organized contest, pitch party or other social media event. Along those same lines, don’t post a comment or tweet to an agent to nudge, request confirmation your submission was received, or ask when to expect a response on your submission. 

While practicing good submission etiquette will not guarantee you'll get an offer, it might help your submission hang in there a little longer. For agents, it is often easier to avoid a potential problem simply by passing. At the same time, by demonstrating professionalism and respect for an agent's time and efforts, you'll make it that much easier for an agent to take your submission to the next step.

How to Query a Novel

Today I'm going to give you a lesson on how to query a novel. I'm kind of in a unique position to do this because I'm both an author (under a pen name) and an agent (under my real name).

Merissa McCain and I have just finished a romance novel and we're in the process of beginning to query it. It's just as exciting and nerve-wracking for me, even though I'm an agent, because I really want someone to love my work, just like every other author does. And of course sell it to a publisher for a truck load of money and whatnot.

But what do you need to do in order to query?


STEP ONE: Write the damn book.

See the irony there? Be sure your book isn't ironic like that...

 This seems obvious, but trust me, as an agent I get queries for incomplete manuscripts. Polish the book. Then send it to beta readers other than your mom, who can give you intelligent, constructive story and copy-editing feedback. Polish it some more. Make sure it's at its shiny perfect best before you even think about querying.


STEP TWO: Next, write a synopsis.
 

This sucks. Everyone hates it. It's hard and you'll tear your hair out and cuss like a sailor, but you need to have one. Make sure it's not more than two pages double spaced and covers the complete story arc, including the ending.


STEP THREE: Write a query letter.

The necessary elements to include in a query letter are:

           - title
           - genre
           - word count
           - a back-of-the-book style blurb that will hook the agent or editor. There are lots of places online
              to get advice on how to write a good query blurb. Go to the book store (or Amazon) and read
              the backs of a bunch of books in your genre. You'll get a feel for it. Then practice writing the blurb
              for yours. Write it a whole bunch of times in a whole bunch of different ways.
           - a VERY BRIEF author bio that includes your publishing history, if any, and/or just a little about
              who you are. Don't include that you've been in love with writing since you were in grade school.
              We all have. It's not really relevant. If you have no publishing history, just give some brief
               professional background and call it good.

That's all. Query letters should be short. They're a professional business communication, not an opus. Remember, agents get hundreds of them and they don't want to get bogged down reading huge long letters.


STEP FOUR:  Figure out where you're going to send your queries.
 

This includes a lot of research. You must be patient. Publishing is a long game.

Check places like QueryTracker, Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write Water Cooler, Writer's Digest Guide to Literary Agents, or if you have a subscription to Publisher's Marketplace, you can research there. These are some good places to start.

I recommend making a spreadsheet that includes columns for: date submitted, agent name, agency name, email address, submission guidelines, notes, date response received.

This will help you keep track of your queries so you don't query the same person twice, and so you can keep track of submission guidelines.

Once you have a list of agents you think might be a good fit, look at each and every one of their websites and make copious notes about their submission guidelines. They will all be different.

This is CRITICAL, folks. Seriously, one of the best ways to irritate an agent is to not follow their guidelines.

It could be useful to also look at the agents' Twitter feeds to get a feel for who they are and if you think you'd be a good fit.

***Query Tip:  Just because an agent offers you representation, doesn't mean you should accept it. Lots of authors panic and think they won't find another agent, so they sign with the first one who offers. If you're not a good fit with each other, for whatever reason, you don't have to sign with them. Keep looking!


STEP FIVE: Send 'em out.
            

You've done the research, you know who you want to target and what their guidelines are. Now it's time to submit to agents.

The best plan is not to send to every single agent at once. Do a test run of maybe a third of your list to see what kind of comments you get. Make any necessary adjustments then send to the next third, and so on.

It bears repeating here to FOLLOW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES TO THE LETTER.



STEP SIX: Wait.


This is the hardest step.

Be patient.

Don't nag the agent.

Give them space and time.

Agents can get a hundred or so queries a day. That's not easy to keep up with, so give them some time.

Sometimes they list on their website how long their turnaround time is. For the love of all that's holy, do not check in with them before that time frame is up.


STEP SEVEN:  As your responses come trickling in, make note of them on your spreadsheet. Indicate the date you received it and if the agent gave you a reason why they rejected. Often you'll get a form rejection. Don't take it personally. Agents don't have time to write a personal note to every single author who queries them. It's just the nature of the business.



STEP EIGHT: Have faith.


This is also hard because when you keep getting rejections, it feels like nobody loves you or your literary baby. You get a lot of "this isn't really a very good fit for my list" responses which sound like bullshit, but are really true.

When you go to the bookstore and read the back of a book and maybe the first page, it's not the author's fault if you don't really like it enough to buy it. It's just that it's not the story for you.

It's the same for agents when they read queries. Most of them just aren't the right fit.  

But eventually it will be the right fit. The book will be the right fit for the agent, and the agent will be the right fit for you, and a chorus of angels will sing and radiant beams of sunlight will rain down on you, rainbows will burst, unicorns will frolic, and all will be right with the world!

And then you have to start the process all over again when your agent submits your project to editors.

Congratulations and welcome to the wonderful world of publishing.

~Margaret