Querying Dilemna

Lindzy1954 · Jun 20, 2010

Finally, my first co-authored YA novel is complete (Harmony's Song, book 1 in the Songbird Series) and I am so thrilled. However, now comes some tricky questions. I have a YA novel I wrote solo that was queried briefly and met with pretty positive response (though no offer

) very recently. Should my co-author and I query under my name to those agents because they have a familiarity with my work or is that being a nuisance? Part of me feels like I have established a repoire with some of them, but the other part feels like starting over with a blank slate and querying under her name would be best (she wrote Romance prior to this series). Thoughts? Thanks for any ideas guys - I'm stumped.

Lindsay N. Currie

--Show some love and visit my new, rehabbed site Tiptoe Kisses and let me know what you think!

Stunted · Jun 20, 2010

Definitely requerey to the people who responded well to your last book! That's a great strategy, and I'm sure a lot of them would love to see your work again.

ps, I love your title and the name of your series!

Sage · Jun 20, 2010

I'm going to move this to a more appropriate forum in a second. I don't know much about co-authored books and how to query with them, but I would suspect you would query with both your names, wouldn't you? Even with the co-author's name in there, nothing's stopping you from saying, "Hey, remember me?"

Giant Baby · Jun 20, 2010

If any of the agents welcomed resubmission of edited work, or asked you to hit them with your next project, then absolutely, use your own name and remind them of the request in the query.

If it was a simple rejection (even if off requested materials, even if personalized), I'd not worry too much about your name. Use the name you want to query under (which should really be YOUR name). But I wouldn't mention the previous rejection, even if it was off requested materials. Agents are people. They all have different ways of rejecting writers. If they didn't recommend revisions or ask to see future materials, you'd be doing nothing more than reminding them that they'd rejected you in the past.

Sounds positive to me. Good luck!

Lindzy1954 · Jun 20, 2010

Thanks for the feedback guys. Definitely the query will indicate that the book has been co-written and will list both of our names. I guess I was getting hung up on the agents seeing my e-mail and thinking it was too soon to requery them with a new project (I was querying my solo book while writing the co-authored book, so there is little time in between).

I agree though that the agents who were "on the fence" about my solo book or indicated that it was a close call should be the ones I send the query too. As for the others, I'm sure they are probably much too busy to remember my e-mail address and I'm probably worrying about nothing. Thanks again!!

Lindsay N. Currie
Tiptoe Kisses

Ryan_Sullivan · Jun 20, 2010

The name shouldn't make much of a difference. If they liked it, they might remember, if they didn't, they surely won't. So your name should be fine.

Querying Dilemna

Lindzy1954

Chi-Town Scribbler

Stunted

Ich heiße Superphantastisch!

Sage

Our Lady of Parentheticals

Giant Baby

Oh, the humanity.

Lindzy1954

Chi-Town Scribbler

Ryan_Sullivan

Agented YA Writer