During these days, you can take the time to re-read the letter with fresh eyes, and even have a few other people look it over for you, too. But no matter how painful it becomes, you should try to resist the urge to follow up with agents within the first month, at least. Many agents can take up to six months to respond to cold queries i. For all you know, they might be finishing up reading your work and will be happy to have the chance to offer you representation.
As much as it might be hard to remember, literary agents are people too. They have likes, dislikes, personal interests, and more — and a lot of that info can often be found in a brief online search. So before you send a query to an agent, take the time to do a little research on them and read any interviews or profiles of them that you can find. That way, your message to them has a better chance of having an accurate personal touch.
Plus, it helps to be absolutely positive that your agent is a accepting new clients and b still representing the genre you write in. This is just a basic form of etiquette. However, once an agent declines an offer of representation to you, you can feel confident querying another relevant agent in the same agency.
In contrast, a project synopsis which you should only give to an agent if they request it of you is a more granular breakdown of the beats of your project. For example, you can give information on a chapter-by-chapter basis within a synopsis, but NEVER in a query.
With both projects, you should ask yourself: does the agent NEED to know this piece of info? Instead of hitting up two or more agents at the same agency, pick one to query for your first round of submissions. If you make significant adjustments to your pitch, then you can always swing back later and target another agent. But most agents advise against submitting to multiple agents at the same agency.
With those exceptions out of the way, writers should consider querying multiple agents at once. That said, writers should avoid a complete "shotgun approach" to queries. I've found that queries are more effective when they're personalized. Part of that personalization is addressing a specific name first and last. Another part of that personalization is following the specific rules that an agent or agency spell out in their guidelines.
How to write successful queries for any genre of writing. So you don't need to write a brand new query letter each time you submit to a new literary agent.
But you'll probably find more success if you at least consider possible tweaks with each query. As an editor, I can tell when I'm receiving a "form query," and those are the kind that are most likely to receive a "form rejection. The main driving force behind simultaneous submissions is to improve the time between that first query and acceptance. While some agents are quick to respond yay or nay on a query, others can take longer to give a thumbs up or down.
In fact, some may never respond unless they're interested. However, you may have your eye on a specific agent at a specific agency and feel like that's your "dream agent.
If that's the case, I recommend that you give the agent a specific period of time to respond. Once that time elapses, feel free to start pitching other agents. The Writer's Digest team has witnessed many writing mistakes over the years, so this series helps identify them for other writers along with correction strategies.
This week's mistake is to write all the time without taking a break for other activities. Author Beth Kirschner discusses how to create character conflict that can mirror a larger societal conflict. Award-winning author Joy Castro discusses how her free webinar series, Writing Brilliant Essays, is a marriage between pre-COVID classroom practices and the incorporation of what she learned when education went virtual.
For the November PAD Chapbook Challenge, poets are tasked with writing a poem a day in the month of November before assembling a chapbook manuscript in the month of December.
Today's prompt is to write a raw poem. Every good story needs a nice or not so nice turn or two to keep it interesting. This week, let your character travel to another dimension. When writing about real people in historical fiction, what might the consequences be of taking certain artistic liberties? Author Robert Lloyd discusses the ethics of literary revivification. Ambassador Philip Kaplan discusses how the characters came to him through the magic of the writing process in his debut novel, Night In Tehran.
Today's prompt is to write a memory poem. Write Better Fiction. Short Story. Is it OK to submit a book to multiple agents at the same time? They expect you to have approached one or more of their peers, and competition is considered healthy. If an agent shows an interest in your work and asks to read the full manuscript, some could ask for a short period of exclusivity but most simply ask that, out of courtesy, you make them aware of any interest shown by another agent.
One thing not to do, however, is to use this tactic as a means of speeding things up. The publishing industry is deceptively small when you begin to boil it down by the number of people working on your type of book, making the chances of everyone at least knowing of one another quite high.
One final thing to avoid: resist the temptation to use the same covering letter to submit to multiple agents.
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