And now the wait...

Agents vary in the amount of time you have to wait. QueryTracker has a good database of wait times for most agents.

Some agents (approaching half) will never get back to you.

Your journalistic credentials at least show that you know how to write clearly, which puts you ahead of 90% of what agents receive. It works in your favour, but ultimately all it really does is perhaps encourage the agent to give you a bit more of a chance when they're reading your sample material.

Don't put all your hopes on one agent, you should query at least a half-dozen at a time or it will be a very long process for you.

You might never get a response. When I was querying, I never received anything from more than half of the agents, and I took the silence as a rejection.

I would query more agents instead of just one.

Yep, QueryTracker is very handy, if you sign up for the free account it'll work as a spreadsheet to keep track of your queries as well. Have a look at the success stories, most of them sent out 50 or more query letters before finding an agent, you'd have to be incredibly lucky and good to pick up an agent on your first try.

I have to co-sign what everyone else said. It can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 months to hear back, assuming you hear anything at all. It's a good idea to query 5-10 at a time; it's a small enough amount to keep track of, but enough that you're not banking on just one agent. Also, if you get all 5-10 rejections back, this also gives you an idea if your query and synopsis are working in your favor; you might have to tweak them a bit when you query the next batch.

In the meantime keep writing your next book or finally get to pulling those weeds in your neglected garden.

COchick said:

You might never get a response. When I was querying, I never received anything from more than half of the agents, and I took the silence as a rejection.

I would query more agents instead of just one.

Click to expand...

This.

From my experience the requests and (mostly) form rejections came in within the first 2 weeks and it became silent and sporadic after that. Some writers send out a ton of queries in a short space of time and some send out in batches (say 5 or 10), tweaking the query as they go along if they get no takers. I secured representation using the former (riskier) strategy but it will vary from writer to writer. General consensus is that silence is the new 'No' so zero response=rejection

I signed up for the paid version of Query Tracker as it provided well needed info. I also signed up for Publisher's Marketplace for track records and who represents info etc. Agentquery.com is a great resource along with Preditors and Editors. Don't forget Google Books because agent names come up in the acknowledgments. Also google 'agent name/agency absolute write' to see what people say about the agent/agency on AW.

Good luck to you! Isn't querying grand? /Sarcasm

When I first came to AW, I thought that the forum titled "Query Letter Hell" was so strange. Now it makes absolute perfect sense. And it's not just the writing the query part, every part of querying has been hell (for me).

With all that said, I wish you the best!

I heard back from two agents over a year after querying, 15 months for a 'no thanks' and 13 months for a partial request.

Good luck with the querying! It sounds like you've gotten onto the query tracker goodness, so I hope it goes well. You do need to do more than one.

I've heard back relatively quick for most. Started querying in late July. Sent out 8. Got request for a partial with one, then a subsequent request to redraft and resubmit. Four rejections, one of which told me it needed polishing. Two I may never hear back from.

Firstly, congrats on sending that first query.

Waiting time can be anything from a couple of minutes to....well, ever.

If you haven't heard anything in 3 months then you can drop them a nudge email.