Unpublished Queries

Turnip Knight said:

I'm an unpublished writer with no writing degree, but I feel (and I've been told) that my writing is quality. I also feel that I have a unique and fun story with great characters.

How likely am I to get a response from an agent? Do I need to get published in some way first, since I have no degree?

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Agents will evaluate your work, not your degree.

Publishing history is slightly more complicated, but not in a way that affects debut authors (it can actually be a hindrance, depending on prior sales). Every agent out there wants to be the first to discover a new author. Ditto publishers.

One writing myth I'd love to see die is that you need some kind of degree or certificate to be taken seriously. It's the work that matters. Nobody cares how you got where you are; they only care about what you can do.

a good response rate to aim for querying is about 10%. Meaning, if you send 10 queries, you hope to get 1 request for further material (and the other 9 will either be No-response-means-no or an outright rejection.) There's some variance on this, but it's something to aim for. The main takeaway is that a 90% silence/rejection rate is completely normal and fine.

I do have a degree, but it wasn't in writing or very related, and the majority of writers I know who queried successfully did not have any prior publications.

If you are writing nonfiction then your following and/or expertise are all factors to be weighed, but if you are writing fiction then the book is the main thing which matters. The agent likes the book, or they dont

Turnip Knight said:

Thank you. That does reassure me some. I just see people say things like "If you don't have a degree, just lay what awards you've won, or what magazines you've been published in."

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I mean, if you have sales, you do want to include them in your query letter. But no agent is going to read an awesome query and think "Oh, but Mr. Non-MFA hasn't even sold to the New Yorker. Pass!"

Turnip Knight said:

I'm just not into flash fiction, or short stories. I have and could write a couple, and will write more eventually. It's just a slog.

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In my genre, the short story market is insanely tight. I really think it's harder to sell a short than find an agent.

Focus on your manuscript, and when it's ready, your query letter. Focusing on anything else is just going to clutter up your psyche.

I don't think my agent even knows what my education is. The actually never ask, except perhaps conversationally.

(Psst, the little secret is that if you can write well with no degree it makes you a bit special in their eyes!)