046: My Top 3 Querying Resources
- Click here for ways to work with me + a free character profile template: www.thekatiewolf.com/info
- The last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode! Submit your questions for me HERE.
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@katiewolfwrites
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiewolfwrites
My top 3 querying resources
Hello, welcome back to the podcast. This episode is going to be about querying and my top three querying resources. And what's interesting about this is, these were the same three resources that I use the first time around when I was originally queering, back in 2018, these are the resources that helped me find my agent and sign with her. And these are also the three resources that I have found most helpful now in 2022, when I'm querying again, to try to find a new agent after I left my last agent. So these these are resources that are helpful for a lot of writers, they really saved me in terms of finding agents who were a good fit for my book. And they also just helped me feel more in control in the querying process. Because there's so much that's not in our control, we cannot respond. If agents respond to us when they respond to us what their feedback is, we can't force anyone to offer to represent us, there's a lot that's out of our hands. And so using these three were resources really helped me feel like I was at least doing my part, I was at least putting myself in the best possible position or Now currently, I'm putting myself in the best possible position.
So the first resource I want to shout out is Publishers Marketplace. Now, there is a free kind of version of Publishers Marketplace where you can get access to a newsletter that they send out called publishers lunch. And it includes some, like a listing of recent deals and book related news, if there's changes in imprints or publishers. So it's, it's kind of more industry focused with a few deals. But I really recommend paying for access to Publishers Marketplace, because that's where you're going to find agents. That is where you're going to find agents to query, it's really worth it, I believe it's $25 a month. So what you could do, if you know, I know it's a lot to ask to, to spend money on something without knowing, you know, if it's gonna pay off, but what you could do is pay for a month of it, get a big list of agents from it, and then cancel your subscription, there's no long term contract or anything.
So you could just do the one month, get your list and then cancel it. But what's great about Publishers Marketplace is it contains listings of deals that are being made. And you can search by agencies. So if you want to search like the overall literary agency, that's that's making deals in your genre, you can do that. Or you can also search by agents. So with this recent round of querying mine is it kind of straddles the line of women's fiction thriller, but I'm choosing to query agents who deal who have made deals for thriller novels, kind of psychological thrillers/women's fiction. So I went in, and I looked at thrillers, okay. Like, who are the agents that are making a lot of deals in the thriller suspense genre? And I was able to see, okay, who's most active? What kind of deals are they making? How many authors do they represent? And I was able to pull a list from Publishers Marketplace. And something that's also good about Publishers Marketplace, as you can see how active agents are. So for example, in my search, I noticed that there were a few agents who came up who hadn't made a deal since like 2018, or who had made one thriller deal back in like 2014. So those are not going to be great agents for me to query, I want to choose agents who are currently, you know, recently have made deals who are more active. That's something that's important to me. So it was easy for me to kind of weed my list and say, Oh, well, if this person hasn't made a deal since 2018, I'm not going to query them, you know, now maybe down the road, eventually, if it gets to a point where I have to kind of expand my list, maybe I would consider it but for right now, these first few months, I'm choosing to only pick agents who are active. Um, yeah, so Publishers Marketplace is fantastic.
The other the second resource that I recommend is manuscript wish list, this is a free resource. And what you can do is search agents. And you can also search editors, I believe, but I've just I've just used it to search for agents who have kind of detailed requests like detailed wish lists about what kinds of books they're looking for. And they'll also some of them will get very specific and tell you what they're not looking for. And then they'll tell you how to query them, which is fantastic. So I've seen a few agent pages where they'll say, they'll go beyond just, you know, if you write in these genres querying, they'll say, no, here's exactly the kind of story that I'm looking for. And also, if your story deals with these topics, I'm not a good fit for those for those kinds of books, which is fantastic, it really helps you get a really great list of agents who are going to be good fits for your book. Because remember, I guess I should have said this in the beginning, when you're getting a list of agents to query, you don't want to just blast agents at every agency hoping that someone will be interested in your book, especially in the beginning, it's really important to get a tailored list and focus only on agents who first of all represent the genre that you are writing in, but also who you feel like would be interested in the type of book that you are writing, and manuscript wish lists can really help you do that.
Not every agent is on manuscript wish list. So it's not a comprehensive listing or anything, but I would say of the agents that are on my list currently, probably 50 to 60% of them have a manuscript wish list, page or listing so I can see what they're looking for, which is fantastic. But my my first agent was not she doesn't have a manuscript Wish List page. I don't think, she didn't, then she might now. If you have a burning desire to write a book, but you don't know where to start, I've got something to share with you. Maybe you've always wanted to write a novel but you struggled to find time to actually sit down in right maybe you wonder, Who am I to write a book, maybe you're not sure how to actually structure a full length novel Do you outline or just dive right in? Wherever you're at my new blank page to book membership can help. It's specifically designed to help new writers go from idea to written edited book. It includes a monthly live training with me on crafter mindset to drop in weekly writing sessions to help you make progress, a private q&a podcast episode a Facebook group in an entire online course, with video trainings on my nine step process of writing a book, basically, everything you would need support accountability, help with your mindset, and more, get six months of access for just $59 a month. That's it, click the link in the description of this episode for more info, or go to www.theKatiewolf.com/membership for more.
The third resource that I highly highly highly recommend is called query tracker. Query tracker is it has a couple of different purposes and functions. You can search for agents by genre, if you want to do that. You can search for agents who are currently accepting queries, which is nice because sometimes agents will close to queries and say like, I'm not accepting any queries, either because they're trying to catch up on their backlog of queries, they've just got so many to look through, or because they have a full client load already. And they're not looking to take on any new clients. So obviously, that's something you want to watch for before you plan on querying someone you need to know if they're accepting queries. And this is something that you can find on query tracker, or you can also go to the agency's website and they'll let you know. But query tracker, so it gives you the ability to search agents, but it and it also lets you kind of save a list of agents that you have queried.
So right now I have a list in query tracker of the agents that I have queried. So I can go in periodically pull up that list and say, Okay, who am I still waiting to hear from? Who has fulls? Who has partials? Who should I probably close because it's been two and a half months, and I haven't heard anything. So that's a great way to kind of keep track of things. And I think the biggest benefit of query tracker is that when you go into an agent's profile, you can look at this thing called, I'm gonna look it up right now. I think it's called Data Explorer. And it will show you the responses that other people have gotten from this agent, yeah, I just pulled it up really quickly. It's called Data Explorer. And so you can see, okay, here's, it'll highlight in yellow like, here's the date that I sent in my query. And then you can look back over the last weeks and months and see when people have gotten responses to their queries. Now, some agents don't give out responses, they'll only reply if they're interested in seeing more material from you. But some agents will. So for example, I queried an agent recently, this agent that I just pulled up on my screen right now. And I see that her last rejection that she sent to someone was on August 16. And it's August 18, as I'm recording this right now. So I see that she's pretty active, like she's pretty on top of her queries. And she that was a rejection for a query that was five days old. So, you know, she's pretty on top of it. So that'll give you an idea of how long it takes an agent, on average, to respond, if they're going to respond, if they're not going to respond, you know, who knows. But you can also record when you get a partial request. And when you get a full request, so that way, you can look over this agents data, look over all of this stuff all the last weeks and months and see how many full requests have they asked for, you know, how many queries have they responded back to and said, I liked your sample, can I see the full thing.
So if an agent has not requested a full manuscript in the last year, that tells me that they're probably not looking for a lot of new clients to acquire. Whereas if an agent has requested six manuscripts in the last month, or two months, that tells me that agent is probably looking to acquire new clients, they're a little bit more hungry to kind of sign new people. That's kind of the assumption that I'm operating under anyways, you never know for sure what's going on. And the thing about query tracker is it is reliant on people accurately reporting their data. So of course, take this with a grain of salt, but I try to be really diligent about it. So I will update as soon as I get a response from someone, I will update my query tracker and say, This is the date that I got the rejection, or this is the date that I got the full request, so that it can hopefully help other people to see like, Okay, here's kind of the the agents general track record with responding.
Query tracker is free, there are some reports that you can pull that require a premium subscription. I paid for a year of the premium subscription. And I believe it's like, $25 a year, or something. So I just went ahead, and I just went ahead and did it. Because, you know, I felt like it was it was worth it to me. For example, I wanted to see, okay, once an agent asks for more pages, like once you get a full request, what are their standard response times for how long it takes them to get back to people. And I believe that's only a report that you can get if you have the premium version. So that was worth it to me, because I think I've gotten like 8 full requests so far. And I really want to be able to kind of like set my expectations for how long it's going to take. Now. I'm recording this in August. It's summer, publishing is notoriously slow in the summer. So you know, the response times might be longer than normal, but at least it kind of gives me a gauge. Again, I guess it's like going back to that whole illusion of control thing. Now, with query tracker, I will say it's important to not be obsessive and to check it to check all of your queries and look at when people agents are responding and ooo they responded to this one that was sent after me. But why haven't they responded to mine? Like you will go crazy if you really get in the weeds with this. So yes, it's a good resource to keep track of things. But please don't go crazy and get obsessive about it.
Okay, so those are my top three queering resources that I recommend. Yeah, again, there's lots of information online, and lots of different resources. These are just the three that I have found most helpful, because I feel like they give me just a good starting point for query. So I hope that was helpful. If you are querying right now or about to query, I'm with you. I'll be thinking about you crossing my fingers for you. Alright, see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning in.