Signing with My Literary Agent
Navigating the Query Trenches, How to Handle Multiple Offers & Why You Should Never Count Yourself Out
Signing with a literary agent is a huge milestone for any writer pursuing traditional publishing, but the road to reaching that first industry ‘yes’ is a turbulent one.
In this post, I’ll be outlining my own experience with querying. (That saying “nothing happens and then everything happens all at once” couldn’t be more true.)
If you stumbled upon this post by chance, welcome! And thanks for reading. My name is Kris and I’m a speculative-fiction / Adult SFF writer.
For context, this was my first time querying and I have not had prior agent representation. I was very new to this. There was so much I wish I knew so I hope this can be helpful in some way.
A quick note for querying writers: as you probably know, there is a vast spectrum of experiences when it comes to querying. Some writers send out one (1) query and get an agent right away, while other writers are querying multiple books across multiple years. None of this in and of itself is an indication of skill/merit. I think it’s worth the reminder that rejections don’t define the value of your project and it is 100% worth it to find your passionate advocate.
At the end of this post, you can find an overview of my final query stats.
Did I query the first book I ever wrote?
No, this was the third book I wrote to completion. The most important thing to me was that I wanted to be proud and genuinely passionate about the work before I even thought about querying.
How long have you been writing?
Like a lot of writers, forever. But I only started paying attention to craft and how to critically look at my work around the time I was starting university. In my third-year, I felt I had plateaued and I was dead set on improving.
I was fortunate enough to take two creative writing workshops as electives, which helped me hone my revision skills—how to give feedback, receive it, and discern between what’s useful and not useful for my personal vision of a work.
The biggest thing that improved my line-level writing though was really just… writing a lot. Making a habit of it. Early pandemic, I buckled down and trained the muscle to the point where writing became a compulsion. I saw a drastic improvement between 2020-2022. By the time I started writing The Book That Got Me An Agent, it was mid-2022 and I had built a solid confidence as a writer—something I’d been working toward for over ten years.
How did you know you were ready to query?
When the manuscript was polished.
How do you know if the manuscript is polished? There’s no set answer. A big portion of it is honing your own intuition as a writer. I’ve sort of learned—through practice/trial and error—when I’ve taken a work as far as I can on my own, and then I know I need fresh eyes.
It’s best not to rush into querying. Especially if it’s your first completed project. Don’t skip out on alpha/beta readers. Let the project sit for a while, if you need. Be receptive and ready for feedback. If you think you’re still quite emotionally attached to the work, don’t rush into feedback either. The distance is important for your own well-being sometimes.
In my case, the book I queried (100k Adult Literary Science-Fiction, titled LOCAL HEAVENS) was a project I’d been writing on and off for about three years. I had written a previous version of the premise that I scrapped and rewrote from the ground up, which eventually became ‘draft one’ of LOCAL HEAVENS, although because I’d let the story ferment for so long, this ‘draft one’ didn’t feel like a draft one. I also had written the draft slowly (all in all, about a 9-month process). Writing slowly, and with an outline, meant that the first draft ended up fairly clean and it only took me about 2-ish weeks of revision before I felt good enough about it to query.
You shouldn’t take these things as recommendations, of course, as you know your writing best. In fact, if it were any other project, I probably would have let the draft sit for at least a few weeks before revising, and another few weeks before actually querying. But my alpha/betas had given me next-to-nothing feedback on big developmental edits (an unusual occurrence), so I knew that I had done something right. My revisions were therefore focused on tweaking scenes and line-editing. A ton of line-editing. So much line-editing. Especially in those first five-ish chapters. Those will be your sample pages for most agents.
After I felt the manuscript was in the best possible place, I drafted my query letter. And this is where things got tricky.
I wrote this book indulgently, like a fever dream, and when I’d resurfaced at the end of my revisions, I wasn’t prepared for how cold it would feel to leave that ‘bubble’ I had built around myself and this story.
Query letter, synopsis, and figuring out how to pitch this weird ass book.
LOCAL HEAVENS is a very genre-bendy work which I can best describe as literary cyberpunk. For that reason, I felt it broke a lot of the usual writing rules that I try very hard to follow in all my other projects.
Notably, it is slow-paced. There’s info dumping in the first few pages. Despite being a cyberpunk project, it’s not action-packed with a quick, inciting incident. The character voice, I knew, might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The protagonist is very much ‘passive.’ My biggest fear with the work is there weren’t a ton of SFF agents who stated explicitly that they like the mix of literary/commercial so I wasn’t sure how to position the pitch. On top of that, many agents who did take SFF often preferred fantasy over sci-fi.
Despite all of this, I really believed in the integrity of the story and I did not want to compromise my original vision. I also felt I owed it to myself because I was (and am) so passionate about the work, despite sci-fi being a tougher genre to sell.
So I took the plunge. I wrote several drafts of my query letters and synopses, and did some research to make sure I was following as many querying tips as possible. (For context, a query letter is a 3-4 paragraph pitch of your book, similar to a blurb you’d see on a book jacket. A synopsis is a summary of the beginning, middle and end of the book—the whole plot, including spoilers. Some agents will ask just for a query letter and sample pages. Other agents want the query letter, sample pages and synopsis. Other agents, just the query letter. It really depends.)
Once it came down to combing through agents’ manuscript wishlists (MSWL for short, which is basically a list of what kinds of stories an agent wants to read), I was confronted by the reality of publishing: the book is now a product to be sold.
Querying makes you feel like you have to put your book very easily in certain “boxes,” and I had a lot of trouble with that because I wasn’t thinking about market trends for this project. I wrote this book indulgently, like a fever dream, and when I’d resurfaced at the end of my revisions, I wasn’t prepared for how cold it would feel to leave that ‘bubble’ I had built around myself and this story.
I soldiered on. Sent out my first batch (~10 or so) and within days—form rejections. Crushing. I don’t remember much about those first 2 weeks of querying because they were difficult and I was very dejected. Around the ~20-ish mark, I had a mix of forms, radio silence, and 1 partial request. I took a break.
While waiting for more rejections to come in, I decided to work on a more “marketable” book, but one I was still very passionate about. I had a fantasy manuscript that I was always planning on revising so I started brainstorming that to get my mind off things.
An unexpected solicit.
I was three weeks into querying by now. Still getting form rejections and waiting on a response from the agent who had my partial. For fun, I made a moodboard for LH and posted it on Twitter. This was purely for my own enjoyment and to share with my writer friends. It was not a pitch contest.
By a stroke of luck, a junior agent (who I had added to my query list weeks ago, but was currently closed to submissions) happened to see the moodboard and reached out, inviting me to query them. I was stunned.
I sent them my query letter and the first ten pages. Same day, a full request. In addition, they were curious about what else I was writing, namely fantasy. I was currently revising a fantasy book, but I was still in the early stages of it. Drafting hadn’t begun yet. Nonetheless, they wanted to know more about the project, so I sent along additional material.
BIG NOTE TO INCLUDE HERE: Before you send stuff to any agent, make sure they are a) who they say they are, b) reputable, and c) an agent whose MSWL appeals to you. I had triple-checked that this agent’s Twitter/email matched the one on the official agency website. I also checked their existing client list and since they were a junior agent, I checked to see that they had the appropriate mentorship. (They did.) Just want to make that disclaimer because it’s important to protect your work and your time/effort.
This agent and I went back and forth for a bit over email. Again, I was happy to speak with them because I had a feeling our tastes really lined up based on their MSWL. After I had sent over both LH and some material for my fantasy book, I let them take a few weeks to review the work and began querying a little more.
A personalized, complimentary rejection (which hurt like a mf).
Around the time that my full was under consideration, the agent who had previously requested a partial—and synopsis—finally got back to me after 2.5 weeks. Lo and behold, it was a rejection. I can’t remember if I cried, but I did feel awful, even though the rejection was very kind.
Even reading this back now still stings. It was exactly what my fear for the book was at the time. Essentially: “this is great, I just don’t know how to place this in the market” and “I’d hoped for something different out of this premise.”
It goes without saying, but I have no hard feelings for this agent. As you can see, their response was very compassionate and encouraging. I’ll also note that this wasn’t the only agent who passed, citing “no clear editorial vision.”
I’m grateful for this agent taking the time since personalized compliments are few and far between in the querying journey.
Suddenly, an offer of representation.
At the end of June, after 4-ish weeks of querying, I had queried a total of 35 agents.
I was planning to send out more, but out of nowhere, the agent who had my full—plus my fantasy material—wanted to get on a call. This was not an offer call (yet), but just a quick meeting to pick my brain about what kinds of revisions I was making to my current fantasy project.
All of this was very exciting. They asked for a synopsis of this fantasy project and said within the week they would get back to me. However, on this call, the agent also asked if I’d be okay with my fantasy project potentially being my debut. I hesitated. I’d had similar discussions with my writer friends, and the thought had crossed my mind before (that LH might be too weird to debut with), so I told them I was okay with it—but! After we hung up, and I had some time to think about it, it made me anxious.
I realized I’d really have to let LH just… sit idle for a while, rather than brushing it up for submission. Again, the fantasy WIP that the agent liked wasn’t actually written yet. What appealed to them was the premise, and based off of LH, they liked my voice.
In hindsight, the disparity between this agent’s excitement for my work (i.e. being very excited about my fantasy, but not chatting too deeply about LH, the book I actually queried with) did throw me for a loop. But in the moment, I was having a good time chatting with the agent.
The next morning, I sent over the requested synopsis. They got back to me just a few days later to officially offer me representation (!!!!). So we had our offer call. I learned more about their agenting style (pretty editorial/hands-on) and they sent over the contact info of their clients. They said they liked LH too, but we didn’t get too deep into an editorial conversation because the call was still very focused on my fantasy WIP. When I asked what changes they’d like to make to LH down the line, their feedback was brief. The extent of it was: they’d like to make the passive protagonist more ‘active’ and to deepen some of the world-building.
The thing I felt was missing from this call was that fiery passion for LH. They liked the concept for sure, but passion is something else. In fairness to the agent, I could have asked more questions, been more insistent, but I kept getting caught up in the fact that they didn’t think LH would work as a debut—so I began to believe that too.
That said, I came away from the call feeling good overall. I felt like we had very similar tastes in stories and I think our personalities aligned. I spoke to their clients, who also loved working with them.
But the journey wasn’t over.
So I had an offer! Now, what?
A lot happens when you get an offer of rep. The main thing is that you have to tell all the agents who haven’t answered you yet so that they can decide if they’re interested too. Industry standard is two weeks to give the other agents time to consider the work. It was a whirlwind two weeks.
The same day of the offer call, I sent out the necessary emails and QueryManager updates. I also reviewed the contract the agent sent over and was messaging their clients (all of whom, as I said, were really kind and loved working with this agent).
That was a Friday. Immediately, the next morning, the full requests came through. By Monday, seven agents had the manuscript. Along with these requests, of course, came some step-asides. One in particular floored me:
“Compulsively readable”??? MY protagonist?? Were they being serious? (lol) I’d spent the last month believing that the slow pace of the book and the character voice would be a turn-off for most.
Anyway, seven additional requests was more requests than I was expecting. I felt like I’d entered an alternate dimension.
I continued to sit and wait, aggressively checking my emails and being shocked that my query journey had completely turned upside down.
Side note: Why you shouldn’t lie about having an offer of rep.
I did get a fair amount of responses after nudging with an offer, but just to make it clear: don’t be tempted to… lie.
Aside from the fact that being caught doing so will sour any potential at a professional partnership, there are two important reasons this is unwise:
The agent, who may otherwise have been interested in your pitch, may step aside because they cannot read your manuscript fast enough for the two-week deadline. They are being courteous to you and the offering agent.
Some agents will ASK who the offering agent is. I had two agents kindly ask this.
So yeah, just don’t lie. And don’t nudge with an offer of rep unless you are genuinely happy to work with the offering agent because, again, an agent may not be able to accommodate the turn-around time. If an agent is actually interested, you will likely get a response eventually. If it has been a while, send a polite nudge. A handful of agents, who I thought would be a long-shot, did request my full and I think I could have just been sitting in their ‘maybe’ piles.
A second offer!
Less than a week after I received an offer from Agent A, one of the agents who had my full (we’ll call them Agent B) got back to me and said they’d like to call. They were only halfway through LH but they said they were ‘hooked’ and knew I was on a deadline.
This call was different. Right away, we started talking about LOCAL HEAVENS. The agent complimented my line-level writing and enjoyed my protagonist’s voice. (“A quiet strength” was one way they described him… I could have cried.)
After getting their initial thoughts, I asked them about their agenting style. (They said they are editorial, but focused less on line-editing and more on ensuring a book is structurally-sound. That appealed to me because the prose itself isn’t what I struggle with so much as it is plotting.) Then we went into the meat of their editorial feedback.
This was where the cogs started turning for me. This agent was both passionate about the idea and had actionable thoughts on what they wanted to strengthen. It was more granular of a discussion and their feedback was really great. I felt lucky to get such deep insight from fresh eyes. Another thing that I asked Agent B about was what submission might look like for this project. This was the side of publishing that I didn’t know much about. The agent then went into an overview of what they thought could be a good action plan for a project like this.
At this point, my stomach was doing flips because I was actually envisioning submission, so the tenor of this conversation was immediately more tangible than my conversation with the first agent. I liked how methodical this agent’s approach was, and their editorial vision was quite sharp.
By the end of the call, they officially offered me representation (!!!!!) and sent over the contract along with the contact info of their clients. By now, I had received 3 step-asides and 4 agents that still had my full. With a second offer on the table, I officially had a choice to make. I sent the 4 remaining agents another nudge—vibrating with confusion, nerves, and excitement.
As soon as I got off the call, I made a pros and cons list. I messaged my writer friends for their input. I read the contracts over and over. And yet! The journey was still not over.
This agent is an industry veteran. I thought my query to them was a shot in the dark.
A THIRD?? OFFER???
The next day, after speaking with Agent B, I suddenly had an *Agent C* who was interested and wanted to talk.
I went into my querying journey very adamant about not having a “dream agent” because to be honest, your dream agent should be the agent that’s passionate about your work with the confidence/ability to pitch it. You can’t 100% know that until you’re actually speaking to that agent. Basically, I refused to get attached to the idea of someone before getting to know them.
Still, when I saw that Agent C wanted to chat, I was kind of in disbelief. Before nudging with my first offer of rep, they had been sitting on my query for almost 50 days. I admired their client list and so they were one of the first agents I had queried. See below, proof of my utter shock when I got their message:
This agent is an industry veteran. I thought my query to them was a shot in the dark. No doubt they had the expertise, but the big question was: were they really passionate about LOCAL HEAVENS?
On Thursday—one day before my deadline—we got on a call.
I can’t exaggerate this enough, but when this agent started gushing to me about LH, I blacked out. The book was right up their alley—literary voice with a commercial hook. It was their sweet spot. They loved my line-level writing. Their sincerity blew me away. Their excitement radiated through the zoom call like sunshine. Something within me was ballooning with shock and gratitude.
Full disclosure, the agent had read through the manuscript rather quickly as they had been out of office when my offer of rep notices came in. I shared more backstory about why I wrote the book and immediately got that feeling of connection I was waiting to see—that confirmation that they understood the work! Aside from the prose, they praised the way I explored technology, and how ‘timely’ the book felt on a thematic level.
They asked me how I’d like to measure success as an author, and I said: “First and foremost, my measure of success is ‘am I having fun?’” I thought it was partly a naive response, but it was also the most honest, and this agent really appreciated that. Even more than that, it was what they wanted to hear. “I need to feel like an idea has lit me on fire in order to write it,” I admitted. My nerves went away after that.
What stood out to me about this call, most of all, was how supported I felt from the get-go—how clearly the agent adores their clients, how sharp and knowledgeable they are, combined with how passionately they spoke about LH. They said they were envisioning submission lists while reading my manuscript—one of the biggest signs that they want to take on a project.
I chatted about my fantasy work as well and they liked that, despite being Adult, it had crossover potential into YA. We spoke for 1.5 hours about everything from LH, to their agenting style, to learning more about their powerhouse team. By the end of it, they officially offered me rep (!!!!!!) And I was reeling.
I decided I would fight for this manuscript.
The final decision: how to handle a multiple-offer situation.
If I had to do things differently, I would have asked the first offering agent for more than 2 weeks, even if it was just an extra day or two. The problem was that, at the time, I genuinely didn’t believe that more than a couple other agents would request the full, let alone that I’d get more than one offer. (You never know what’s going to happen in your querying journey, so don’t count yourself out.)
In the period of time before the deadline, I was emailing the agents’ clients and getting advice from my writer friends who had been through this querying process before because when I tell you I had no idea what I was doing… yeah lol. A support system is everything! You really do need as much time as possible to speak with people and do your due diligence. Thankfully, despite the tight deadline, I was able to speak to everyone I wanted to, though for any querying writers in the same boat, don’t be afraid to request the extra time if needed.
Again, I weighed the pros and cons. I ranked each agent based off the following three categories:
1) Excitement for my ideas—equal passion for all my projects.
2) Editorial vision for LH—the specificity of their feedback on my manuscript.
3) Industry experience—history of sales, connections to editors, submission plans, etc.
Overall, though I really connected with Agent A, I also connected with Agent B just as much, and the latter had provided me more across all three categories. However, Agent C is someone I’ve always wanted to work with and when their excitement for my ideas matched their wealth of industry experience, that’s when the decision got really tough.
In the end, after much deliberation, I chose to accept representation from Agent C.
The tipping point for me was when I spoke to this agent’s clients. I was lucky enough to get on a call with one of them and this author graciously went into such detail about the way their agent advocates for them, plus having the editorial eye needed to sharpen a story, while also respecting a writer’s vision.
Thirty minutes after I got a blunt form rejection, I got my first offer of rep. Querying is insane.
Did your YouTube channel play a factor in receiving an offer?
I wish (lol.) But no, not at all.
I doubt the offering agents even knew. It wasn’t something I included in most of my query letters. Though I had a few drafts early on where I mentioned I was a ‘content creator’, it truly made no difference. I got form rejections on those.
Agents do want to sign debut voices. Your pitch and prose matters most. A 1-5k following on a single platform doesn’t mean anything, as far as publishing goes, so it was very much a non-factor.
Of course, if you’re looking at a 100k+ following on any given platform, that’s probably another story and worth mentioning.
Keep going, even if it’s out of spite.
In hindsight, I do feel fortunate that my querying journey wasn’t as long as it could have been, but getting stories in the hands of the people who need them shouldn’t be riddled with so much radio silence and anxiety. It would be wonderful to have less hoops to jump through, and to not feel the need to write stories while stressed about comps, tropes, social media-centric marketing.
I’ll tell you that for those first 4 weeks, I had never been at a lower point mentally, emotionally and creatively. The form rejections in the beginning sent me into a spiral. I cried myself to sleep one night. Thirty minutes after I got a blunt form rejection, I got my first offer of rep. Querying is insane—it shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s a rollercoaster. You will constantly gaslight yourself into thinking your work is worthless. Don’t believe it.
I’m glad I didn’t throw in the towel too early, that I made my silly little moodboard, that I queried the agents I thought would never reply, that I vented my frustrations and celebrated my victories with my friends who uplifted me and offered me honest guidance.
Once I’d steeled myself against those first rejections, I decided I would fight for this manuscript. If that meant writing other books to get my foot in my door, I would do it. I knew I deserved a chance—and I know you do too.
Query stats:
Time spent querying until first offer: 6 weeks
Total queries sent: 35
Partial requests: 1
Full requests: 8
Rejections: 14 form, 1 personalized on partial, 11 step-asides (mix of form and personalized)
Total offers: 3
Even just reading this, I can tell you have a knack for storytelling. Been following your channel for a minute and it's so exciting to see your journey. Being represented by the same agent as Shelley Parker-Chan is HUGE. Can't wait for the inevitable book deal announcement ;).
This is great insight into the industry and how querying operates. Thank you so much! Querying is a very scary thing, and even though I’m not at the stage where I can, I really appreciate you explaining your journey in such detail! It makes me more confident.
And big congratulations! I’m so excited for you and I can’t wait to hold, and read Local Heavens!!!!