148: Red Flags in the Querying Process

 

Having writBefore you query, which is the process of sending your manuscript to literary agents in the hope of securing representation, it's helpful to know what to watch out for. I share a few agent-related red flags and one broader red flag in this episode. 

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Red flags in the querying process

Hello, welcome to your big creative life podcast. We're talking about querying today, but before we get into that and talking about red flags, talking about agents I want to share. Well, okay, I'm gonna do an update episode in October, because to talk about writing, to talk about life. My daughter's gonna be turning one in October, which is insane. So I'll talk more about all this then, but I wanna share something so exciting, and I feel like I can only geek out about this with my writer friends, because anyone else is just like, what like this doesn't... Okay. Great.

 

I've shared before that I was agonizing over the decision of point of view in my thriller that I'm starting to write or, well, I mean, I started ages ago, God only knows how long ago, but I felt like I couldn't move on in the book because I just couldn't decide if it should be three point of view, two point of view, etc. Finally cracked the code. I'm scrapping what I was gonna do, and I'm shifting the structure of the book, so I'm gonna have Part One from one character's point of view, part two from one character's point of view, and part three from one character's point of view. Boom, done. I feel so good about it. It is so exciting. Maybe even do a little part four with everyone, like kind of alternating, I don't know. We'll see.

 

I'm gonna start out just doing three, and I think this is gonna work, because there's a little bit of separation with the characters, but then they do come together, and I just envision this working, and, oh, I'm so excited, and it's making me excited about the book and the being able to stay in a character's point of view for a third of the book at a time. I just, I'm really excited. I think it's gonna be easier to write. So anyways, I'll share more about that, and like, kind of where I'm at when I do the update episode, but so excited that I just wanted to share, because I know y'all will celebrate with me and appreciate how big this is, because it can feel so some of this is mental. Some of this is a mindset thing. I there's no reason that I couldn't have just continued to write this book, and like, figured it out as I went.

 

But there is, there are decisions in the writing process where you get to a point where you have to decide, you have to decide what you're going to do about something before you continue to move forward. Maybe it's not a point of view thing all the time. Maybe it's like a fundamental world building issue if you're writing speculative fiction, sometimes they're just decisions that have to be made, and sometimes there are decisions that you can make later down the road. So anyways, yeah, that's my exciting news about that. What else? Yeah, I'll just save the rest for the October episode. Well, this is going to come out in October. I guess next week's like the week after is when I'm going to do the update episode.

 

Anyways, this episode is inspired by a conversation that I was having with a coaching client who is getting ready to query and this was a coaching client who was not sure, when we started working together if she wanted to do indie publishing, if she wanted to try and query this, she just was not sure, and decided over the course of this, this time that we worked together, that she did want to query. So we were talking about her letter, we were talking about her strategy and all of that. Anyways. Long story short, we got into a discussion of red flags and things to look out for when you're querying, and so I thought it would be helpful to talk about them in an episode.

 

But I'm gonna expand a little bit beyond just red flags for agents specifically. But just like I have a couple more red flags that I want to talk about, because they're they're important as well. Okay, red flag number one, if you are querying, and let me back up a step, actually, sorry I always forget to do this. But if you're new to this podcast, or you're new to the writing world, you might not really understand what querying is. So I just want to break that down and explain it for a second. So the traditional publishing path. When people talk about traditional publishing and all of that, what they mean is usually these big five publishers. There are the big five groups publishing houses, and 99.9% of the time, you need a literary agent before you can submit your manuscript to them.

 

Sometimes these publishers will have open calls where you can submit your manuscript to them without an agent. But again, 99.9% of the time you do need an agent. So before you can submit your manuscript to publishers, you have to have an agent first, and an agent has to offer you representation. You can't just hire one. So querying is the process of sending your manuscript sample, usually the first 10 pages, a few chapters, something like that, out to agents and saying, like, Hey, this is my book. You write an email to them, describing your your book, and they can read the sample, and then if they're interested, they'll ask to read more and then offer you representation. So that's what the process means that we're talking about, okay, red flag number one, you should never pay an agent to read your submission. Agents should not be charging reading fees.

 

Agents do not make many any money upfront until you sell a book, if someone is is charging a reading fee, if someone wants you to pay them to work for you up front run. It's a scam. No legitimate literary agent or agency will do this the way that it works. Usually the industry standard. There might be some differences among agencies or agents, but usually the standard is that they just take a percentage of what you make. So if you sell a book to a publisher, your agent will take 15% of that. If you sell foreign rights, your agent will take 10% of that, or 20% I actually forget the percentage for foreign stuff, but so that's how they make their money, is they get a cut of whatever. And that that goes for, like, if you sell the rights to your book to be made into a movie, they get a cut of that.

 

So there's no money exchanged upfront. Yeah, so, so just run that's a huge red flag. They're not a legitimate operation. They're not not a legitimate agent. If they charge any sort of fee for you to send them their manuscript, your manuscript. So run big red flag. The second red flag is that the agent has no publicly viewable like deals that they've made, and they don't really seem to have any authors that they've represented. This does not mean there's a difference between an agent who is newer, who is more junior, and maybe is just in the process of building their own client list. There's a difference between that and then someone who has just never worked as a literary agent before and is saying that they're an agent, but they don't have any deals that they've done, they don't have any clients that they represent.

 

You can't find information about them online, because how it works at a traditional kind of agency is it's an apprenticeship kind of model where you work your way up. So you will work under more senior agents, you will help them with their client list. You will help with projects. So you gain experience working with authors directly as a junior agent, kind of supporting other agents. And then eventually you start stepping out on your own. You start working on your own projects. You start representing authors on your own. So you have a as a junior agent. Even though you might be building up your list and making your you're new to making deals, you still have a lot of experience under your belt working with clients, working with authors.

 

So that that's a different thing completely. I'm saying, like, if someone another, another thing that inspired this, this video, I guess I should add to the context here is they mentioned an agency that I had never heard of because they saw someone on Tiktok signed with this agency. I went to Google them and they I they seemed legit. I mean, they didn't seem like a spam agency or anything like they actually seem legitimate. But the problem is that the few agents that worked there, from what I could tell, had not worked at other agencies before this one. It did not seem like the kind of agency where there was this model of gaining experience. You can't just decide one day that you're going to become an agent and open an agency and start representing people. I mean, I guess you could, but you shouldn't do that.

 

So that was, to me, that was kind of like, yes, they might be legitimate, but I would not want to query them. I would not feel comfortable working with an agent who doesn't have any direct experience doing the thing that they're doing. Like, I just, I wouldn't. So anyways, um, yeah, there's a difference between the junior agent versus someone who just like is completely new to the field and has never worked anywhere else, has no experience with authors like anything like that. So that's it. That's a red flag to me, because, again, I just would not feel comfortable with that. I. And it's also there's a saying in the traditional publishing world that no agent is better than a bad agent, and having parted ways with my first agent, I can say that that's true based on experiences from friends that I have, other people I know who were represented by agents that were not great. It's 100% true.

 

An agent is your advocate, your business partner. Like this, relationship is so important. And if you get an agent who does not have connections in the publishing world, who has never really done this before, doesn't know much about selling books, like, why would you why would you put all of your trust and faith in them, I would feel so comfortable having a junior agent, someone who is newer to getting clients or getting authors like on their list, on their own, but has experience working with other senior agents like I would be comfortable with that in a heartbeat when I was querying this past time around, actually, I think probably queried more newer agents than established ones.

 

So yeah, I would have no problem with that. It just happened that I signed with Molly, who has been doing this for a number of years. But yeah, so that's why I kind of view that as a red flag. Not everyone has that same I don't know belief about it, but I just think if you're gonna get an agent, you gotta get one who's gonna be helpful and knows what they're doing and can get you can help you to the end goal, which is not just a book deal, but a good book deal. Oh, I forgot to add, I want to add one more thing to the red flag kind of list of when you're looking at agents or agencies. So I talked about, if the agent has no experience working in another agency, they don't really seem to have clients that they represent, like you can't find who their authors are.

 

But then also if, if you do find deals that they've made, but they're only deals at very small presses where you don't even need a literary agent to submit to. To me, that's a red flag. I use that term loosely, like it's not. It's legit, certainly, but it's a red flag to me, because why would I hire someone and give them a cut and everything when that's all. Those are the only deals they've ever made. If they have a mix of deals, they've done some traditional at big five publishers. They've done some online only ones. They've done smaller imprints. That's totally fine. There are a lot of great presses who where you don't need an agent to submit to, and it can be helpful in that case, when you get a book deal, or you get an offer from one of those presses, like even though you don't technically need an agent, it might still be helpful for you to have one to negotiate your contract as a line of defense, as a business partner in this like endeavor of publishing.

 

So that's not a red flag on its own, but just if that's the only kind of deal that they have ever made, if they're if they have never made a big five deal, if they have never made a deal with a publisher that doesn't require an agent to submit to again, I would just hesitate, because I don't know. In that case, I would rather go the other way, like, if that were my approach, if that's something I wanted, like, I wanted to be submitting to small presses, I would almost go about it the other way, like I would almost just submit to the small presses first. If that was my end goal, because I don't need an agent, then if I get an offer, then I can go through the process of looking for an agent. That's my take. Anyway, it was all just my opinion, but, well, I shouldn't say all, because some red flags are just red flags, no matter what, you should never pay an agent that is not my take. That is just like fact in the industry. But I recognize that some of these things are just more my take on it.

 

Okay, the next red flag that I want to present, I'm going to tell you the situation first, when I was well, no, I'll tell you the red flag first, the agent pressures you to do something that you don't feel comfortable with related to your book. This can happen once you sign with them, but it can also happen before, like when you have a phone call with an agent because they read your manuscript, they're interested, they want to get on the phone with you and talk about working together if the agent i Um, okay, I have to be careful as to how I say this, because it's not a red flag. If the agent just sees a different vision for your book than you do, that's fine. Sometimes agents and writers will have creative differences, and the agent will be like, hey, I want you to take this manuscript and.

 

Make these changes, but you're not comfortable with that, and you don't want to do that. That's fine, like that happens, I guess what I'm what I'm referring to, is more the agent pressuring you to the agent pressuring you to do things in a way that just feels like kind of slimy, like I read one time about someone querying and they had an agent who was interested. And when you have an agent who offers you representation, it's standard to go back to all the other agents that have your manuscript and say, Hey, I've received an offer of representation. I can give you 10 days or two weeks or whatever with the manuscript before I make my decision. And that way people who have it, it's just a nice thing to do, because then they get a chance to finish your manuscript and decide if they also want to offer you representation.

 

So instead of just immediately saying yes to the agent, you let everyone else know. So that can be sometimes, how people get multiple offers of representation in that period. Sometimes it works that way, not always, but yeah, it's just a nice thing to do. So if you have an agent who offers you representation via email and you don't have a discussion about their vision for your book or your career, or what it's going to be like to work with them, and they just immediately offer you representation, I would be like, hold up. Wait. We have to have a conversation about this before I sign. Like, I have to know these things. And it would also be a red flag for me if the agent was like, No, I need a decision by the end of the day, because to me, that indicates someone who is pushy and not considerate of the process, and there's some urgent reason why they want you to sign before giving you time to think about this.

 

I mean, it's a big decision to sign with an agent, so if they're pushy and don't give you that opportunity to go back to all the other agents, I would view that as a red flag. So that's what I mean by, like, pushy and slimy. Because, yeah, that just shouldn't be the case. Okay, I have another red flag that's not tied to agents, but I want to talk about it anyway, because it's come up in other episodes. It's come up in discourse online, and I think it's very, very important no one can promise you success when it comes to querying. I don't care who you are. I don't care what your credentials are. If you have not seen someone's manuscript, you cannot guarantee success in any way, shape or form, you cannot guarantee that they will find an agent. You cannot guarantee that they'll get a book deal. You cannot guarantee that they'll get a massive book deal, that they'll have X amount of success.

 

None of that querying is one of those things where I've heard agents talk about this, where they they get a manuscript that they love that comes across their inbox, they're like, Wow, the story is amazing. I love it. The author's so talented, but I don't know where this fits in. There are too many books like this. I don't know how I would sell this, and so they just don't take it on. And that happens. So sometimes not getting an offer of representation, not having any luck finding an agent, is not necessarily a representation of the strength of your writing, the quality of your manuscript. Sometimes it's just the market. Sometimes it's just a selling thing. Sometimes it's just the agent is at capacity, or that I don't know, all kinds of things, right?

 

So for someone who is not an editor or an agent to talk about absolutes in publishing, it's a red flag runaway. There was discussion earlier this year about someone who was offering a query boot camp that was $500 and the marketing was very persuasive, very, very good copywriting, very good marketing, essentially hinting that if you take this course and you absorb this knowledge, that you too will get an agent and a big book deal, which is very predatory to me, especially for a course where there's no actual feedback on your book. Apparently there are. There was like a training on how you should, what you should do to make sure your manuscript is ready, which I guess helps. It's better than nothing.

 

So just watch for that, I guess is what I want to say. It's a red flag if anyone talks about that, if anyone wants to give you guarantee about, oh, if you work with me, I'll guarantee that you get an agent or a book deal. It's just not it doesn't work that way. Also, there are big world events that take place that we cannot account for when it comes to. Querying, but mainly like publishing and book deals. I mean, my first manuscript went on submission in late 2019 we had an editor who was interested at a big five publisher, and actually she was a newer editor who was just starting to work on her own projects, which is exciting. She was like in her mid 20s, and had some phone calls. I was revising it a little bit and then sending it back to her to see if she wanted to acquire it. And then covid hit, and not only did covid hit, but she got laid off. This imprint shut down.

 

My point is, there's so many broader things that can happen that it's just a huge red flag if anyone makes guarantees. I don't do that with my marketing. I don't make any sort of guarantees, like, Oh, if I edit your book, you'll achieve this. Or if you work with me in my six month coaching program, you will sign with an agent, or whatever. It's just not it doesn't work that way. It's predatory. So that's a huge red flag. Please just be smart. Watch out for that kind of stuff. Yeah, okay, let me think if there's anything else I want to say in terms of red flags. Kind of on a similar vein. This is like sort of a similar red flag, but it's just something that really, I don't know if it's a red flag, but it just pisses me off when people take when people talk in absolutes about agents or editors or traditional publishing who don't work in traditional publishing like I have to be very careful how I talk about it, because I'm a writer going through this experience, but I'm not an agent, I'm not an editor at a publishing house.

 

So I have to be cautious about what I say and the advice that I give, because I'm not on the inside of this industry in the same way that someone who works as their job in this industry would be like, I'm Yeah. So, like, I saw a Tiktok from someone who was an editor, and she said, like, oh, agents will automatically reject your manuscript if you have this on the first page. And it was like, No, it was, I like, that's not, that's not how this works. You can't speak in absolutes like that. Like, okay, if it's something general, like, if your first page is crap, then agents won't continue reading. Well, sure, duh, but I don't know, you can't speak in absolutes like that, even for very common things like, okay, there's a common. It's very common for a lot of new writers to start their book page one with a character waking up from a dream. And that because it's so common, it's become kind of like, I don't know, try it's just, it's just not the most effective way to do it because it's so common.

 

So you could make a video saying like, agents will automatically reject your manuscript if you open with a character waking up in the morning. Well, no, that's not true, because there are people who can take that common idea, that common concept, spin it around, do it differently, so there's something unique about it. So you can't say that. So just be careful. When people are speaking in absolutes about agents will reject it if this, and you'll never find success if this, because it's just not there's so much more that goes into it, and a lot of times those people are either selling something or they're just doing it for views for the algorithm.

 

So yeah, okay, I think that is all I want to say about red flags. I think that kind of covers it. If you're curious about querying or questions to ask if you are on a phone call with an agent. Any of that my experience with quering. You can check out previous episodes of the podcast. I have a number of them that talk about this process. But again, I wanted to do one about red flags specifically, because there are some things that in this episode that I haven't talked about before, and I feel like it's so important, because there is a lot of, if not outright misinformation, just bad takes when it comes to this process online. So you gotta be smart. You gotta I hate saying do your research, because I feel like that's a term that, like the right has co opted into, like, do your research, which just means, like Googling something to find something that confirms what you think. But what I mean is there's a wealth of information online with resources for you that are free on writing a query letter, finding agents to query. I've got a ton of content about it. I've got podcast episodes about it.

 

So do the research to figure out how this process works, because it's widely available. And I want you to be smart. I don't want you to fall for a scam agent. I don't want you to, like, have a bad experience. So, yeah, just just do your research, and also good luck. Yeah, I have an episode that talks about mindset in the query trenches, because it can be. Okay, it can be hard. So just know if you are in this process, or going to be in this process. I'm thinking about you. I know how hard it is, but if you do, if you take these things that I mentioned into consideration, and you make sure that your manuscript is as good as it can possibly be, you're going to be ahead of the curve already, so All right. Well, thank you for listening. I hope that this was helpful as you are embarking on your querying journey, and I will talk to you soon.

Katie Wolf