Querying in summer

It might be worthwhile making the effort to join conversations here and read and comment on other people's query letters, so that once you've reached 50 posts you can post your own letter for us to have a look at (and have earned the good will of others in the Query Letter Hell board)--it's really hard to say what's going on without having seen your letter. And what do the agents you've queried say? Some will specify that "no answer means no thank you" after a certain number of weeks.

As for ongoing debate about not querying in the summer...honestly, it doesn't matter. Better to get into their query queue in June than wait till September to send it.

One request from a batch of ten, is a 10% request rate. That's what authors are told to aim for.

I'm querying over the summer. It has a small effect, some of the agents I wanted to target are closed. But I don't really have a choice. I've been given a referral to one agent and that means I need to query others or the timing will be off if that makes sense.

I would just query.

Funny, I was thinking about this today. I did a round of queries a few months ago and heard back from most within a month, only two didn't reply. I've only sent a small batch out this time but have only had one reply and am wondering if the heatwave we're having here has had an impact (all Uk agents). And of course summer is busy. I don't really want to wait until autumn to send more out but am curious to read more replies on the subject, I will wait if enough people say summer is a bad time to query!

kamelka said:

I know it takes a while for them to take a look at it, but still. Should I be concerned? Should I try to follow up? (especially the first batch?) I'm also thinking if it wasn't a mistake to query in the summer. Everything is slower in the summer, right? Am I overthinking this? Should I just go and meditate?
HELP FRIENDS!!!

Click to expand...

Nah, you may not hear back at all; many won't reply unless interested. Or sometimes they reply after 3 months. Or 3 hours. Or a year. You never know.

Regarding the time of year, I think there's sort of always a reason--summer vacations, winter holidays, fall and spring catching-up-after-holidays, the December fallout from NaNoWriMo, and then various book expos and conventions that occur periodically throughout the year...I guess you could get super detailed about it if you want, but even if you send it at a particular time, they might have a whole stack of other queries to look at that need to get read before yours...etc.

My view, anyway. Not necessarily the right one...

Also check out this BookEnds post by agent Jessica Faust about summer slowdown.

A good way to check would be QueryTracker or a resource like that. It might be a premium only feature, but you can see where you are in the queue of queriers and if anyone after you had materials requested. That was how I dealt with the "omg is it me or is it them" anxiety, especially since I was also querying over the summer!

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Don't nudge the agent about your full until it's been out at least two months, preferably three. Reading new stuff isn't where they make their money, so that's the sort of thing they do on their off hours. And yes, some won't respond at all.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

I'd say just take it slow and relax since... it is summer after all. It all depends on the agency, and then again depends on the agent, but it's probably safe to assume things slow down at least a little bit during the summer. I can only speak from my experience, but I know that, in my case, for example, my agent is actually taking the time to read new books from her clients over the summer, in addition to actually taking some vacation. She's prepping for September, when there's going to be a push for agents to start submitting new books to editors at publishing houses.

So in that regard, you *might* expect some slower responses from other agents if they're doing similar. I know quite a few of the other clients with my agent have given her new submissions to read in direct anticipation of a September submission. So at least in this case, she's definitely prioritizing her existing clientele over the new queries she's getting in, as well as any partials or fulls she may have requested. It's obviously going to vary a lot with different agents and agencies, but there's some overlap in what she's doing and what others are as well.

Like Shoeless says, while summer can slow down an agent's usual activities due to the people they work with taking holiday/leave etc it can provide downtime for them to actually catch up on reading queries. It's a bit like how if you work in an office the slow summer days can be the ones where you do jobs such as clearing out the stationary cupboard and blowing away the cobwebs. For example, I know my former agent takes two weeks off and that's it. Also for example, although this is out of date, when I first queried, I got some very speedy responses over summer. The only time of year I've found terrible for querying as a YA writer is March and April, which gets eaten up by the big book fairs.

So I'd say it's swings and roundabouts, and query at the time that suits you.

Fwiw, although some agents I had targeted to query say they are closed or slowing down for summer, I've had about eight responses in the space of a week (a mix of rejections, partials, and one full). So, somebody is still in those offices! But one of the places that requested a partial did also warn me it'd be a longer than normal wait due to summer. So as Raggy says, swings and roundabouts.

Well, even if it is slower, it's not as slow as waiting for summer to pass and then sending your queries would be.

pretty much!

September is agent and publisher crazy month so don't expect to hear anything back until the month is over. Once it is, all bets are off. I don't think NANIMO registers on many agents' schedules so don't worry about that.

Versailles said:

September is agent and publisher crazy month so don't expect to hear anything back until the month is over. Once it is, all bets are off. I don't think NANIMO registers on many agents' schedules so don't worry about that.

Click to expand...

I think most agents are well familiar with NANOWRIMO, and the avalanche of queries that come after it.

Feels really weird to come back to this thread... having now queried successfully in summer.

If a data point is worth anything, most of the bookends agents seem to work through July and then take off a week or two in August, including time to attend some conferences. August definitely crawled past in terms of stuff being done.