Thank you once again to everyone who participated in the Be An Agent for a Day contest. 50 queries, 300+ participants, 15,000+ comments later….. I know you’re curious to see how you did.
When I started this contest I really had no idea how it would go. I didn’t even spell out a prize because I wasn’t sure if we’d have five winners or fifty winners. I didn’t know if it would be fantastically easy for people to spot the three actually-published authors among the fifty queries or whether it would be fantastically hard.
Well, now we have our answer. And I think you’ll be surprised.
First off, none of the actually published books were among the top five most requested queries.
And out of the 300+ people who participated, only two people guessed all three published authors with their five choices (that’s less than 1%, compared to the 16% who predicted they got all three). A huge, massive round of applause to Moth and Chenelley!!! They win partial manuscript critiques. They also might have a future career as agents.
Now then. At long last, here are the ones who were actually (or soon to be) published:
Query #39 was for THE PREY by Allison Brennan. The query (and manuscript) landed her an agent, a pre-empt offer from Ballantine, and reached #33 on the NY Times bestseller list. Spotting this query would have been a career-maker. Only 15% of the agents for a day requested it (and many of the ones who passed were quite rude).
Query #9 was by Hannah Moskowitz, and her novel BREAK will be published this summer by Simon Pulse. In real life 60% of the agents she queried requested to see more. But only 31% of the agents for a day requested it.
Query #21 was by Inara Scott, who subsequently received a two book deal with Hyperion Books for Young Readers. Only 16% of the agents for a day requested it.
By contrast, the most-requested query overall was #10, a work-in-progress by Dawn Johnson, which generated a 52% request rate.
What should we make of all this?
To be fair, many of the people who personalized their rejection to Allison Brennan’s query mentioned that they were passing because it sounded too familiar. Well….. yeah. It was a big book. Quite a few people probably either remembered it or even read it. So I’ll let some of you slide on that one.
But more importantly, I think this contest goes to show how people may have overemphasized the query itself when they were playing agents. The queries that generated the highest response rate were the most technically precise. They were tidy, they were well-organized, they followed the rules. They were good queries (and some of them may go on to have success stories of their own). But this wasn’t a contest to spot the best queries.
When an agent is reading a query we’re trying to look past the query to get a sense of the underlying book. We’re evaluating the concept and the writing, not ticking off a box of requirements. I don’t reject people solely because they start with rhetorical questions or their word count isn’t quite right or they break one of the query “rules”. I can’t afford to do that. Nor do I request pages for a book that has a perfect query but whose underlying concept is flawed.
A good concept and strong writing are more important than good query form.
Now, a strong query helps your odds and your request rate, which is why we blogging agents spend so much time talking about the “rules”. It really does help your odds to write a good one. When people are writing good queries it helps us spot the good projects. But remember: the most important thing is not writing a good query, but rather writing a good book. A strong concept is so important.
The other main element I’d take from this challenge is how subjective this business really is. What resonates with you might not resonate with someone else. That’s why it’s so important to query widely. I was one of the 40% who passed on Hannah’s query because it just wasn’t quite right for me at the time.
And of course, I hope everyone will remember this contest the next time a poor agent or editor is mocked for passing on [insert bestseller here]. Because getting it right is incredibly hard.
What do YOU think of the results?
Hey, thanks to everyone who said nice things about Delcroix Academy (Running Blind). It’s coming out in summer 2010. I hope those of you who were interested enjoy reading it! 🙂
Really, best of luck to everyone here — and keep querying! It only takes one Super Agent to pull you out of the slush pile and sell your masterpiece to the house of your dreams. It happened to me (and I even write hypothetical questions!).
Congratulations, Inara! That’s so fantastic!
I used to abhor the idea of blogs – ridiculed them mercilessly; now, that’s twitter to me. I imagine I’ll be time-sucked into them as well (hopefully in a worthwhile way like NB’s blog) – I’ve never been good at staying committed to my dislikes – I told myself when I started college, I’m never gonna do engineering (I started off as a physics/english double major) and look where I end up. God help me, though, the word tweet sends shivers down my spine and makes me want to root for Sylvester now 🙂
Inara – thanks. That’s encouraging.
I went away for awhile. I was trying this thing Nathan calls ‘real life.’
Vastly over-rated.
Christine and Marilyn, thanks for the nice words about Come In Character.
I was thinking of hosting a ‘writer’s duel’ there soon. I think that would be fun.
Marilyn, Paulo? Wow. I’m impressed.
And Christine. Don’t be silly. Your novel is worth far more than a cookie. Far, far more. As someone who makes jokes, I know there are some things you don’t joke about. The accomplishment of writing a novel is one of them.
IMHO
Oh, and Marilyn, don’t worry. You are a naturally mature and elegant person. You’ll do fine on Twitter.
Just be yourself, that’s my advice, for what it’s worth.
Whatever that Twitter is. Please don’t tell me. Changing my profile picture is sucking up enough of my life, I don’t need a Twitter addiction. Please give me strength to resist the Twitter….
Really liked 17, 27, 35 and 36. Best of luck to you.
Usually I love high concept but I seem to be the only one who thought that #10 was based on a faulty premise -that some lab tech was able to take alien DNA and give it to other patients – and for what motive? The query did not convince me there was any plausibility to that, although it may be in the manuscript.
Nathan:
Okay, I know this isn’t related to this post (other than to say, see, agents really are valuable) but I was really curious, so I figured I’d ask anyways and you can always just ignore it if you want to. 🙂
I recently read a blog post about the, um, role of agents (and is it just me, or does “The Talent Killers” sound like a great YA horror title?) and though I only skimmed the comments, I noticed you commented quite a bit. I always thought it was best in those situations to state your thoughts politely and move on. You stayed with it, though, and I was kind of baffled as to why. I feel like I missed something, maybe another article or blog entry that would explain why you spent the time trying to reason with such an *cough* interesting opinion when it just doesn’t seem your style.
Have a nice day!
Christina
christina-
I had a Howard Beale moment. Or I guess an evening.
Ah, I see. Understandable.
I vote for an Agent Appreciation day. Or Send Your Agent Chocolates Day. Or something like that. 🙂
Anyways, thanks for answering my nosy question!
-Christina
Mira said:
“Whatever that Twitter is. Please don’t tell me. Changing my profile picture is sucking up enough of my life, I don’t need a Twitter addiction. Please give me strength to resist the Twitter….”
Hehehe. O.K., I will not explain Twitter. But your discussion about profile pictures encouraged me to spend time posting a profile photograph on Twitter. I am signing off the Internet now. Must pull myself away from all this social media stuff.
Well, I was one of the people who had this to say about 39;
Thank you for submitting to my agency, however I’m going to take a pass at this time.
Vic K
Reason; I feel this is too similiar to something I’ve read. Which of course, is the rub – this may well be one of the published ones and I’ve actually read it!
Doofus’-r-us.
But you know, it did occur to me and I went my own merry way anyway.
9 was 6th on my list, which I think I said in my comment, so I’m not hugely surprised about that one, however 21 didn’t even make it through my second round. (I had four rounds.)
So no career path for me as an agent.
That all said, I learned a lot. Some things about agenting and how much skill you need to develop an ‘eye’. Some things about rejections and why form ones are best and fairest. Some stuff about original concepts and great delivery and how hard they hard to find in one package…
…and that I’m not doing too badly with own work.
Thanks Nathan!
This was such a fun contest! Thanks so much, Nathan! I got some great compliments on my query, as well as some advice on how to make it better. And congrats, Chanelle and Moth! 🙂
This was really interesting!! That #10 does sound really intriguing, and I wonder if you requested it, Nathan. I look forward to reading it some day!
Well, despite having thought I’d read one of the books (#37), I managed to not choose any of the three published titles. I am excited to see so many intriguing queries are in production, though, and I hope that I will eventually be vindicated and see my picks and my almost-there picks on the shelves.
Looking back, I wonder how I might have done if I hadn’t been trying to pick the queries that were published, and just gone with what resonated with me. Ah well.
Thanks for the experience!
Wow – I just quickly looked through the 50 queries and am very glad not to have your job. Everything on this list is crap; that three of the books were published means only that 3 more books have been added to the pile of terrible commercial fiction that amasses at our city’s public library monthly. Granted, these books are popular and bring in the money, but your job would be a nightmare for any devotee of literary fiction.
I didn’t participate (was too busy working on my book), but I followed the competition closely. It was very interesting indeed. I almost revealed that Hannah’s query for IF IT AIN’T BROKE was actually for her book, BREAK, which was getting published, but I did’t want to spoil the surprise, and I wanted to see what people would say when rejecting it. Ha! Very funny responses, really.
All in all, I hope people learnt a valuable lesson from this. It is a subjective business, this agent job, and a very difficult one.
There were so many good queries but then, like Nathan said, it takes more than just a well written query to get requested.
I wasn’t even close. I paid too much attention to the form of the query because everyone keeps emphasizing it. And even so, I preferred other story ideas, not the one’s that were actually published. Now I can only hope I’m a better writer than agent.
Is there a sense that books deemed as ‘publishable’ become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
If an agent chooses to represent a book that could be perceived as formulaic or derivative at the expense of something fresh and original, and the formulaic book subsequently gets published and sells, does that validate their decision?
I suppose what I’m asking is to what degree does the industry respond to the market’s needs, and to what degree does it dictate them?
At the risk of sounding negative (sorry) I would have passed on COPYCAT KILLER after reading the title. Even coming back to it with the benefit of hindsight I can’t see anything in the query that makes me think this might be ‘good’. (Good luck to the author. I assume it must be well executed)
hazel–I’m stunned that you can judge the literary merit of 50 books just by reading the queries. Is there a career in that?
Please be sensitive of your audience.
Dear Mira,
Thanks for the encouragement. However, I have to say, all joking aside, after this contest I think I would be pretty lucky to get a crumb, let alone a whole cookie for it. I never understood before why someone would “throw away” their manuscript on self-publishing.
Now, I totally get it. It’s even harder to get published than I thought. And I thought it was pretty hard before this!
My deepest respect to ALL of the authors who are represented here, published or not, whether their queries were posted or not. This is a tough, tough business and a mostly thankless one at that. You really have to be self-motivated and stay that way for a very long time despite countless obstacles and rejections.
Hazel,
All I can say is that I’m very glad you feel that way, because it means that when *I* go to the library to get the next installment of my favorite mystery series, it won’t be already checked out by you!
And, although I think each one of us hopes to one day write a “Great American Novel,” my understanding is that you really should start out in genre fiction to get established first.
(I know, I know, don’t feed the trolls! I couldn’t resist this one, though.)
I can’t believe I missed this! Not happy! I’ve been swamped with British Lit homework. I am now subscribed via email, which is something I should have done a while back. =)
Interesting results, though.
I gave up on the contest pretty early on. I got into a rhythm of pasting a comment, personalising it, typing the verification word, typing my LJ name, verifying that… and then screwed it up twice in a row (I pasted the ‘acceptance’ form letter and then personalised it as a rejection). Figured that even if I did manage to hit all three published queries, I’d failed in other ways. At least you know the honour system works, right?
However, I’d already planned what I would request.
Query #39 …Nope. I think it was the first line that put me off, since I can’t even recall the rest.
Query #21 …I had ‘maybe-yes’ written in my spreadsheet, and only passed it up because of my number of slots.
Query #9 …I wasn’t sure about this one. I thought it was a really good query with a strong voice, but I wasn’t sure if it would sell. Looks like it would! 🙂
(Queries I planned to request? #10, #12, #27, #35 and #50. But there’s still hope for those writers, I’m sure! :P)
What have I learned from this? Well, I used to read Miss Snark and I could never pick out the hooks she would or wouldn’t like, although I could tell what she would probably savage by the end of her reign. I read Query Shark, and couldn’t tell you what queries the shark will like at all!
I don’t want to be an agent, but this all spells doom for my eventual query.
Well, for those who are getting all discouraged, here’s what I think, for what it’s worth.
I think that being published is a very nice thing to have happen to you.
But the fact that you’ve written a book is the real accomplishment.
That’s my opinion, anyway.
Speaking of which, Marilyn, I think your idea of writing a book about ways to distract yourself from writing is an excellent idea.
I’m going to get right on that.
As soon as I finish playing around with my profile picture.
Genkischuldich,
This doesn’t spell doom for any of us. This exercise demonstrated that many writers have been trained to over emphasize the mechanics of writing a query letter – when we also need to be sure that we have written an interesting story with an interesting angle.
Whereas, a well executed query is helpful (and professional), agents will over look a query’s short comings for a novel with an interesting tale.
So, chin up, and think of the unique, aspects of your story that you can promote… while also demonstrating it has a potential market… by including statements such as “written in the vein of…” or “readers who enjoy author x, y, and z will enjoy this novel”
As new authors, we have to prove that we have a fresh, unique angle for an established market.
Agentforday (Resurrected this once)
What do I think? Your contests show me as much about the publishing industry as they show about you. You’re going to be a great dad. Get those kids to stop fighting already.
Extremely informative! Thanks, Nathan.
Thank you for running the contest–it’s been educational. I got “Break”, rejected “Running Blind” with a personal note (not keen on YA), and gave a form rejection to “The Prey” because it was too similar–hah. ^_^ I guess I’ll stick with writing for now!
Nathan – Not sure if you are still reading these comments but I just read your comment about not singling out queries and keeping your blog separate from your job.
I admire that reasoning. I was curious myself but I can see how that “blurs the line” and respect that perspective.
And I apologize for sounding like a KA right now. Won’t let it happen again…
Nathan,
Extraordinary! I would say that agent for a day was a success!
Deepest thanks!
Joanne
This was such a good idea. I wish I could’ve participated, but I just did not have time this week.
Nathan, I’d really like to know what you think about the “agent” who had a list of common reasons for rejection that she would then check. As a writer, I would LOVE that! On another agent’s blog, I mentioned the possibility of having 3 or 4 form letters you can choose from, one that says the writing needs polishing, one that says the idea is problematic, or whatever.
From your point of view, what do you think of things like that?
Sorry if you already commented on her form letter and I didn’t see it – WAY too many comments to sort through. 🙂
This was a fantastic exercise, so thanks Nathan for organising it! I was 0 for 3, although Break was in my request list right up until the last minute.
I would love to have a ‘Where are they now?” blog post in six to twelve months, where you invite the writers who submitted queries to tell us what has happened to their queries since. It would be interesting to see if some that aren’t currently published had found representation, and I’m sure everyone would like to know what happened to the queries they requested.
Oh and thanks to all who submitted queries!
I didn’t do it, but the results are interesting. Congrats to the winners 😀
I started to follow your blog quite late into the Agent for A Day contest, but I still rea each one (…whoops, just revealed I have too much time on my hands…).
I am convinced this post fell from heaven, as did your blog.
THANK YOU!!!!!!
I didn’t participate in this, but in looking at the three queries, I can say that I would have passed on Brennan’s book as well for being too familiar and it’s not because of its success. Martin McDonagh wrote a play that came out two years before that book’s publication with a similar concept entitled The Pillowman.
Now that was something big. It made it onto broadway and was nominated for best new play.