How many agents do you query at once?

Why bother? Just because you have some requests doesn't mean you should stop. Your query is sucessful. Send more out and keep your options open. Then if one of the agents offers representation, you can talk to the others who have fulls and find out who you would want to work with. Nothing wrong with a little conpetition.

Congrats, by the way.

Query till someone says Yes.

I'd stop for now. You gain nothing by continuing to query at this point, and you may lose a potential agent, if it turns out that your manuscript needs work.

Jamesaritchie said:

I'd stop for now. You gain nothing by continuing to query at this point, and you may lose a potential agent, if it turns out that your manuscript needs work.

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Query might be successful but James is right, if the MS you are sending out is flawed you might catch it from the earlier agents and then end up having to revise and make the later agents wait...

I sent a new query out when a rejection came in. One for one, so that I always had at least twenty queries out at a time.

AngelaA said:

I sent a new query out when a rejection came in. One for one, so that I always had at least twenty queries out at a time.

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That's how I've been doing it, but I don't have quite twenty out. Sixteen maybe. I'd have to go count again.

My Dad was a writer -- alas, one who never got published. He told me this joke once when I asked him about querying:

A man is driving his car along the highway and he comes up behind a large tractor trailer. He notices that every ten miles or so, the truck driver ahead of him pulls over to the side of the road, gets out of the truck, and walks to the back door of the trailer with a baseball bat in his hand. He then proceeds to smack the back door of the trailer with the bat several times -- BANG, BANG, BANG! The truck driver then gets back in the truck and keeps on driving.

After the third or fourth time the driver witnesses this strange behavior, he pulls up behind the guy just as he's about to repeat the baseball bat thing and asks him, "I just gotta know. What the heck are you doing that for?"

The truck driver wipes the sweat from his brow and tells him, "I've got a heavy load I'm hauling."

"A heavy load?" the guy asks. "How's hitting your truck with a baseball bat make any difference to the weight your hauling?"

The truck driver tells him, "I'm delivering a load of pigeons. So long as I keep half of 'em in the air at all times, I'm all right."

So the moral of the story is: to reduce the weight of waiting, it's best to keep some query birds in the air at all times.

Haha that's cute skippingstone... If my bf was driving behind that dude, he wouldn't stop to ask, he'd just fly by him in a no-passing zone, swearing and flipping the bird. Man has road rage. (Generaly, I try to drive)

I haven't even started my querying yet, but already I check my email every ten minutes. Can't imaging how bad it's going to be once I send the query out... I bet all of you who've sent 5-20 queries out are constantly checking

I've queried 22 and received four rejections. My goal is to query 33 agents. When I've received 15 rejections I'll overhaul my query letter...again.

I often feel like I'm fishing. I wasn't sure about my query letter, then got a hit on my third query. Since then my ratio is something like 1/10. I always have some "in the air" though, as skippingstone put it.

AngelaA said:

I sent a new query out when a rejection came in. One for one, so that I always had at least twenty queries out at a time.

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I agree that this is a good strategy. And as for waiting for agents' critiques on your manuscript, don't. In my experience, and in reading the posts in these forums, many don't receive helpful advice or even personalized notes after getting a full rejected. And since opinions vary so widely, you wouldn't want to change something in your manuscript unless you are getting the same feedback from several sources: agents, critique partners, betas, etc.

Seems like you are already beating the odds, though, so don't short change yourself - query widely!

Jamesaritchie said:

I'd stop for now. You gain nothing by continuing to query at this point, and you may lose a potential agent, if it turns out that your manuscript needs work.

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I disagree; if you stop now, you may miss out on a potential agent because you aren't out trying.

My advice might differ from the norm, and of course it is just one person's advice, but it is based on my experience and you can take it or leave it.

1. Don't research an agent too much...just find out if they want your genre and more specifically, your type of work, find out if they are accepting queries, how they want those queries, and fire away. Research only those that want your partial or full. Otherwise you'll waste months researching 200 agents, about 90% of whom will glance at your query for five seconds and hit the R button.

2. If you're starting out in the process, query 10-20 at a time and see what happens. If none bite, revise your query.

3. If you're queries routinely get hits, then query them all at once. Life is short, and the process to publication takes years.

4. Agents vary greatly in their response times. You will get a chance to change your manuscript several times before all the ones who are going to say yes say yes.

5. Personalization is overated. Dear Ms/Mr. Ispelledyournameright is about all it takes, at least in my experience. When I started querying I agonized over what to say to personalize each and every one...that was time completely wasted. The pitch is the most important element of your query.

Hope this helps.

justAnotherWriter said:

1. Don't research an agent too much...just find out if they want your genre and more specifically, your type of work, find out if they are accepting queries, how they want those queries, and fire away. Research only those that want your partial or full. Otherwise you'll waste months researching 200 agents, about 90% of whom will glance at your query for five seconds and hit the R button.

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That's not entirely a good idea. I'd add sales record to that list of things to check. There's really no sense in querying someone only to find out they have no record of sales, which is very possible to come across if you're only checking genre, if they're accepting queries and how they want them.

skippingstone said:

My Dad was a writer -- alas, one who never got published. He told me this joke once when I asked him about querying:

[classic joke]

So the moral of the story is: to reduce the weight of waiting, it's best to keep some query birds in the air at all times.

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Are we brothers? My writer dad told me the exact same joke!

I started by querying one-by-one. Once my revision is done I'll send them out in batches.

M.R.J. Le Blanc said:

That's not entirely a good idea. I'd add sales record to that list of things to check. There's really no sense in querying someone only to find out they have no record of sales, which is very possible to come across if you're only checking genre, if they're accepting queries and how they want them.

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There is wisdom in this, but on the other hand, what's the worst that could happen? You waste the 90 seconds of your life that it takes to change Dear X to Dear Mr. Nosales and click Send?

If you research him only after he asks for something, you then only spend the time if there is a reason to do so. Why research an agent who might have 0 interest in your query, might have left the business or might have been hit by a bus that morning? (which would probably mean he is no longer accepting queries)

justAnotherWriter said:

5. Personalization is overated. Dear Ms/Mr. Ispelledyournameright is about all it takes, at least in my experience. When I started querying I agonized over what to say to personalize each and every one...that was time completely wasted. The pitch is the most important element of your query.

Hope this helps.

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I wanted to agree with this. I personalize a few--those that I can legitimately personalize. Meaning I've been reading their blogs for a long time, or used their website to learn how to write a query letter, or hell, that we both happen to speak Japanese. I think personalizing can backfire when it's not genuine, and the truth of the matter is we don't really know these people. All I know about 95% of the people I query is what books they list as having sold, what they say they want in terms of submissions, and their guidelines. Even when someone lists sales or specific genres, who's to say that my writing voice is going to be something they enjoy? Or my story? If I try to personalize each of those, it's going to just come off as false. I make sure to address each person by name, and even when I do have a case when someone says something that makes me say, "Oh, you'd be PERFECT for my story," I avoid it just because really...who am I to say? Just because someone says they like novels that involve some humor doesn't necessarily mean they'd even find mine funny. If my story is perfect for them, the query will show that.

Chris P said:

Are we brothers? My writer dad told me the exact same joke!

I started by querying one-by-one. Once my revision is done I'll send them out in batches.

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Don't know about the brothers thing but clearly, based on your word counts, we got that "writing too damn much" in common. I had to hack my last ms down from 190K words. Maybe our dads could get us matching editorial machetes for Christmas.

PS: Next road trip, I call shotgun.