Craft Chat Submitting to agents

[LJ Beck]

I just read this article for submitting to agents. It has some great info and resources in it.

» How to Find the Right Literary Agent for Your Book

authorspublish.com

 

[Pamela Jo]

Clicking on the water cooler thing I got a page w forums entitled Drift. is that what I was supposed to get?

It is indeed an interesting piece.. I saw this at the bottom, too.

We Send You Publishers Seeking Submissions.​

Sign up for our free e-magazine and we will send you reviews of publishers seeking short stories, poetry, essays, and books.

Subscribe now and we'll send you a free copy of our book Submit, Publish, Repeat

 

[Sedayne]

Clicking on the water cooler thing I got a page w forums entitled Drift. is that what I was supposed to get?

It is indeed an interesting piece.. I saw this at the bottom, too.

We Send You Publishers Seeking Submissions.​

Sign up for our free e-magazine and we will send you reviews of publishers seeking short stories, poetry, essays, and books.

Subscribe now and we'll send you a free copy of our book Submit, Publish, Repeat

I signed up to Authors Publish a couple of years ago. Their free ebooks are great, and their weekly advice articles and free submission calls have been extremely useful. I've watched some of their free seminars too - always enlightening.
It's a husband and wife team in Canada that run the thing. Nice folks. I emailed them once about something and got a lovely and swift reply.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I signed up to Authors Publish a couple of years ago. Their free ebooks are great, and their weekly advice articles and free submission calls have been extremely useful. I've watched some of their free seminars too - always enlightening.
It's a husband and wife team in Canada that run the thing. Nice folks. I emailed them once about something and got a lovely and swift reply.

Good to know. AH so THIS is your source!

 

[Sedayne]

Good to know. AH so THIS is your source!

One of my sources, and probably the best. (I get a lot of stuff from Substack subscriptions too.) Unlike with many mass mailouts I've signed up for over time, I actually look forward to their emails each week.

 

[Pamela Jo]

One of my sources, and probably the best. (I get a lot of stuff from Substack subscriptions too.) Unlike with many mass mailouts I've signed up for over time, I actually look forward to their emails each week.

I still get Tiffany Yates Martin's newsletter and feel the same.

 

[Lakeland Waffler]

For those sending out submissions, I know it’s been mentioned that some agents don’t come back to you or if they do, it takes an agonisingly long time. Well, taking the positive from my last couple of rejections, the following agents were very quick to respond -

Harry Illingworth of DHH literary agency - within a day
Hannah Schofield of LBA books - within 2 days

They might be worth a try if they’re your genre. Hoping that someone else has more luck and has just what they’re looking for.

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

For those sending out submissions, I know it’s been mentioned that some agents don’t come back to you or if they do, it takes an agonisingly long time. Well, taking the positive from my last couple of rejections, the following agents were very quick to respond -

Harry Illingworth of DHH literary agency - within a day
Hannah Schofield of LBA books - within 2 days

They might be worth a try if they’re your genre. Hoping that someone else has more luck and has just what they’re looking for.

Harry Illingworth gave me a glorious, personalised rejection for a previous novel of mine. Unfortunately, he only represents adult fantasy so, now that I'm writing YA, he's no longer a suitable agent or I would submit another to him.

 

[RK Wallis]

For those sending out submissions, I know it’s been mentioned that some agents don’t come back to you or if they do, it takes an agonisingly long time. Well, taking the positive from my last couple of rejections, the following agents were very quick to respond -

Harry Illingworth of DHH literary agency - within a day
Hannah Schofield of LBA books - within 2 days

They might be worth a try if they’re your genre. Hoping that someone else has more luck and has just what they’re looking for.

You know the paid version of Querytracker allows you to sort agent lists by response time? And lots of other stats.

 

[LJ Beck]

Harry Illingworth got back to me as well in a few days with a very polite rejection. As did James McGowan from BookEnds. Caitlin Bisadell from Liza Dawson came back quickly too, with a very short and sweet rejection. haha. I still have 5 subs out. And another to a publisher.

So, here's my thoughts so far after spending a week doing a few queries and getting together my list...

Fuck me this query shite is time consuming!! I don't mind the rejections as much as all the time that goes into research and personalising. I use all the sites and listen to interviews, and all of that. I signed up for SO MUCH STUFF this month to get together a good list. Good grief. But it's okay. For now.

I've gotten really brutal with my agent query list. I cut out more than half of the ones I had in an earlier list based on some new criteria (like if they've sold a book in my genre in the last few years) I still have to go through the searches on Query Tracker, and Publisher's Marketplace, and Jericho Writers. There's apparently another service I heard of through Threads that's called Write Query Hook. They seem to have a more extensive kind of search that they swear isn't using AI. Anyone head of them?

BUT... hold that thought... because I've decided to query direct to the publishers that take unsolicited queries first. So I've switched my focus to that for now. There are a surprising number of publishers out there who take unsolicited subs.

And on it goes...

 

[RK Wallis]

Harry Illingworth got back to me as well in a few days with a very polite rejection. As did James McGowan from BookEnds. Caitlin Bisadell from Liza Dawson came back quickly too, with a very short and sweet rejection. haha. I still have 5 subs out. And another to a publisher.

So, here's my thoughts so far after spending a week doing a few queries and getting together my list...

Fuck me this query shite is time consuming!! I don't mind the rejections as much as all the time that goes into research and personalising. I use all the sites and listen to interviews, and all of that. I signed up for SO MUCH STUFF this month to get together a good list. Good grief. But it's okay. For now.

I've gotten really brutal with my agent query list. I cut out more than half of the ones I had in an earlier list based on some new criteria (like if they've sold a book in my genre in the last few years) I still have to go through the searches on Query Tracker, and Publisher's Marketplace, and Jericho Writers. There's apparently another service I heard of through Threads that's called Write Query Hook. They seem to have a more extensive kind of search that they swear isn't using AI. Anyone head of them?

BUT... hold that thought... because I've decided to query direct to the publishers that take unsolicited queries first. So I've switched my focus to that for now. There are a surprising number of publishers out there who take unsolicited subs.

And on it goes...

Best of luck with publishers!