When Should You Stop Querying a Book?

Hi friends,

I've been doing a steady stream of events lately and that means I've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of authors, ones at all stages of their careers. In most of the things I do out in the world, as an author and an agent, the events end with much-needed and much-desired Q&A. Just like we do on Thursdays here at Agents and Books for paid subscribers (is that you? fill out this form to ask a question!) but with a higher likelihood of this is more of a comment than a question type responses. I love doing Q&As because it feels like the most direct way I can help people navigate publishing. I can't read every book. I can't rep every author. But I can tell you that you won't get blacklisted from publishing forever if you accidentally misspell the agent's name in your query. (It's true. Proofread your work, but it's not the biggest mistake in the world.) The worst part of this, for me, is that I don't have all the answers and some questions don't have answers, and also, some answers are really hard to give.

Some of the hardest questions I answer, besides what's the next big trend? (¯\_(ツ)_/¯), is how to know when an author should shelve the project they're querying and move on. Some writers wonder if there's a rejection count to hit, like after 59 or 87, or 312 rejected queries it's incontrovertible proof that the book is not going to make it and you should shelve it. Some want to know the average number of rejections a book usually gets, so they can see how far off they are. Unfortunately there is no number, no data. In some genres there are copious agents looking for that kind of book, in others relatively few, and that's only one small reason why there's no single number of rejections to work toward. But also, there's just no way to know. A manuscript and a query letter aren't evaluated by an agent's checklist, just waiting for the right fit that checks off all the boxes. There isn't a specific number of checklists you will or won't pass.

There's also no time marker, like if you haven't found an agent or an editor six months after you sent it out, that means the project is a no go. I've sold projects that have been on sub for over a year. I've signed up authors who've been querying for twice as long as that. Your query is not a tomato on a vine, waiting to ripen. It's a book, hoping to find its audience in a sea of readers.

The toughest part of this business, besides the slowness and the money and the uncertainty and the opacity and the inequity (🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠) is the fact that some really, really good books don't find their home. That being "good" is not the only thing that matters when it comes to publishing books. You don't buy a book just because it's good. You buy a book because it's good AND it's in a genre you read or it's by an author you like or a friend said they loved it or the cover is amazing or it's about a time period you like or you are curious about that subject or whatever it is. If the shelves at the bookstore simply said Good at the top and not Fiction or Local Interest or Spirituality, then I guess it might be easier to get published? It would certainly be harder to find what you wanted to read.

Sometimes, you're going to have to shelve a book that you really love, that you worked really hard on, that all your friends and beta readers liked, that you're sure someone out there needs to read. You're going to have to stop sending it out, put it away, move on to another project. I'm sorry. It sucks. Believe me, I have been there. I have shelved six projects in the last ten years or so–four full-length manuscripts and two picture books–and frankly I would have rather had book deals for all those, thankyouverymuch. But it didn't happen and it's probably not going to happen for those books, and I've made my peace with it. Here's how I made my peace with it, in case that helps when you're at this bump in the road.

It happens to all of us.

Yeah, I'm sure there's an author out there who's sold every book they've tried to write (if you don't count that first one and the few from high school...) and good for them. Sincerely! But the overwhelming majority of us don't hit a home run the first time, or every time, at bat. It's so easy to understand in other art forms. You don't write one song, go to Nashville and preform it a few times, and walk out of town with a record deal. You don't buy a big canvas at Michaels, paint it, and walk over the Guggenheim. You don't point your toes and throw up your hands and automatically do a double back handspring. Everything takes practice. Unfortunately, the practice for writing books is writing books. Not all of them are going to work, and sometimes we don't know until we try.

You Have More Than One Story In You.

Ideally, you probably want more than one book deal in your life. I've heard zero authors say I just need one thanks, then I'm good. And once you get one, you learn it's pretty fun and you instantly want another! So, following that logic, you were probably going to have to/need to/want to write another book anyway. It is preferable, of course, to have every book we write published, but it's unlikely. You can and will write another book. That was the plan the whole time. It's just not quite in the order you imagined.

Be Mad About It.

You can be mad about not getting an agent or book deal! You have every right to be! It sucks! Other, worse books have been published and it's not fair! You are correct! This isn't fair and you get to feel whatever you want about it! In fact, you probably should feel your feelings about it so they don't fester inside of you. But getting a book deal is not the fix to these feelings. Unfortunately, the only thing that fixes feelings is time, space, and perspective. Every single feeling you have about getting or not getting published is valid and I'm sure someone else has also had those feelings. But in the end, they're just feelings, and we have to move through them like everything else in life: forward.

Try Not to Look for THE REASON

It's natural to want to preform a post-mortem on your book or submission to see what you did wrong so that you won't do it again. As I've said before, I'm pretty sure my adult novel that didn't sell in 2020 was probably too quiet and also didn't have a strong enough hook or pitch. This is what I gleaned from the rejections, my conversations with my agent, and my gut instinct. But I will never know for sure because there isn't just one reason why it didn't get picked up. One editor may have thought it was too quiet while another rejected it because she didn't like the voice (or whatever). Another maybe passed because she didn't have room on her list and another because it bored her to tears. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I do not know and will never know and that is ok. It's never just one thing anyway. What I can do, though, is make sure my next book isn't too quiet and has a definable pitch. I'm sure it'll have a whole host of other problems, but those two I know to be on the lookout for. I can't go back and "fix" those things about my old novel because it wouldn't necessarily make it publishable. And everyone's already rejected it, so I can't send it around again. That's ok. We tried. She was a good novel, to me. Now I'll go write another one.

None of this is fun or easy. If you're here, at this place in your writing journey, I'm sorry. Know you're not alone. We've all been there or will be one day. It's ok. Dust yourself off and get back out there. Let that shelved book live in a special place in your heart because you loved it, even if no one else did. It didn't need to get published to be a good book.

XOXOXOX,

Kate