Some (very) basic questions regarding emailing queries to agents...

charles19 said:

Hi Everyone:

I have some very basic questions regarding emailing queries to agents. I am going to start emailing this week. The questions are the following:

1. What should I put in the subject line of the email?

2. I assume that the query goes into the body of the email, not as an attachment. Is that correct?

3. In a conventional letter, I include the date and their contact information at the top. Is this necessary in an email?

3. I have a list of about 20 agents who deal with the genre of my book. How many should I send out at a time? I intend to start with the ones that are most interesting for my purposes.

Thanks for your help,

-Charles

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1. Check the agents' websites. Some are very specific with how they want the subject line, because they have filters set to direct emails to different boxes. If not specified, I do something like: QUERY: Really Good Book Title, genre - it gives them important info at a glance.

2. Correct 99.99999999% of the time. Again, check the website. Some agents don't use email at all, they have submission forms on their site.

3. Nope, not necessary.

3... er, 4. That's entirely up to you. It's very common to send queries in batches. This will allow you to see if your query is doing its job. If you get no response, you can tweak your query and try again with the next batch. I personally do batches of 5. Be sure to keep track - I use a spreadsheet that I color code. I can see at a glance who has my query, who's responded, and who I haven't sent to yet. When I'm listing agents, I rank them from 1-5. In each batch, I send to different ranks. My reasoning is that I don't want to blow all my top ranked dream agents in one batch if my query needs work. (And I never query an agent I wouldn't *want* to work with.)

Good luck!!!

Hi there. I highly recommend that you research the submission requirements for each agent you wish to query. Many of them will have the answers to these questions on their websites or a submission form. I feel like every agent has a slightly different requirement, so there's not one answer to fit all agents. One agency may want "Query: Agent's Name" in the subject line, while another might want "Query: Book's Name" or something else entirely. I think most agency's do want the query and sample pages in the body of the email, but some may ask for an attachment or have an actual submission form to send it through.

As for how many agents you want to send it to at a time, I think that's entirely up to you. You can send it to all 20 on the same day. Or send it to your top half one week and the second half the next week or space it out even further if you wanted to. There's no rule for how many agents you can query at a time.

charles19 said:

Hi Everyone:

I have some very basic questions regarding emailing queries to agents. I am going to start emailing this week. The questions are the following:

1. What should I put in the subject line of the email?

Some agents specifically state what they would like the subject line to say on their agency websites. If there aren't specific guidelines I usually put Query: TITLE. (if going to a general agency address where there are multiple agents, I write Query for Agent X: TITLE)

2. I assume that the query goes into the body of the email, not as an attachment. Is that correct?

Yes, unless specifically stated to do otherwise, everything in the body of the email--your query, sample pages, synopsis, whatever they ask for. Most agents won't open attachments, many have programs that send emails with attachments direct to junk.

3. In a conventional letter, I include the date and their contact information at the top. Is this necessary in an email?

No.

3. I have a list of about 20 agents who deal with the genre of my book. How many should I send out at a time? I intend to start with the ones that are most interesting for my purposes.

People have different comfort levels for queries. I usually send a batch of 5, following week, another batch of 5. Remember different agents have different timelines for response--if they respond at all. For many, no response means no, but again, Agent A could mean no if no response in two weeks, Agent B could mean no if no response in 3 months. IOW, if you went with batches of 5, it wouldn't be shocking to hear from an Agent L from your third batch before hearing from Agent C from your first.

Thanks for your help,

-Charles

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Good luck!

charles19 said:

This is all very helpful. Thank you!!

I found this a little daunting: "Most agents won't open attachments, many have programs that send emails with attachments direct to junk." Really? I was thinking of sending my proposal as an attachment along with my query. Yikes. Good thing I saw this. Lesson: I probably shouldn't send anything extra unless they ask for it.

-Charles

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To be fair, this type of policy is just good online security. The second you open an attachment on an email, you're giving that attachment permission to do whatever it is it's programmed to do, including install a virus on your computer. This is why most prudent companies have an employee mandate to NEVER open attachments if they don't know the source, or it wasn't specifically requested. Any company with sensitive information on their network, such as financial data, confidential client details, etc, will usually try to discourage employees from opening the "random cute cat pic, please open and enjoy it, it's totally not ransomware, honest!" file.

Always read the agent's guidelines, however some are still rather vague along the lines of "send a query to". In that case I got into the habit of pasting my first 5 pages below the query letter for those who are not precise about what they want.

charles19 said:

Hi Everyone:

I have some very basic questions regarding emailing queries to agents. I am going to start emailing this week.

Click to expand...

Charles, can you hold off until you've had more responses from non-fic readers? I'm really worried that I've set you on the wrong path. GinJones is much more likely to be right on this than I am and I would hate to think you'd only used one crit, and that from a fiction writer. Non-fic is a whole different ball-game. I only know about punching up words.

If non-fiction, look seriously at publishers in the genre who accept unagented submissions. Non-fiction is often done without agents.

The rest of the advice is spot on. Look at every agent's guidelines and submit as they ask. It's rude not to and some agents simply don't bother with queries that don't follow guidelines. In non-fiction you may very well be sending attachments. Most publishers/agents scan these and, if you send them as a text file, they are going to be less wary of opening them than a Word document. But this will be in the guidelines for submission that you are now going to read.

Jeff

I have noticed over the years that most agents are very specific about what they want and how they want the query presented, so it's just a question of following their instructions.

As to how many to send, how long is a piece of string? I usually send them in batches of five and allow a couple of weeks before the next lot. Although agents generally say they respond in 6 to 8 weeks, if I haven't heard back in two, I won't - except very rarely - hear back at all.

I also research the agents and read or watch any interviews I can find, as this often allows me to personalise my query based on something they like or a comment that I can relate to my novel.

As far as I am aware, a query letter and a proposal are not the same thing.

A proposal is normally for an as yet unwritten work - usually non-fiction. It can save the time that might be wasted on writing something that Agents are not interested in, which they feel cannot be sold, or for which there is no apparent market. It might also reveal/prompt how changes to the proposed content could make it marketable.