So with a solid fifteen or so chapters that I’m ok with, I’ve decided to start querying. Some publishers will only accept full manuscripts, but there are plenty of agents and publishing houses that will start with less. I’m not totally new to this part seeing as I’ve written up plenty of short story submissions (although without much success) so I think I have some idea of what I’m doing. I hope so anyway. My plan is to find some agents who publish in my genre, maybe try to track down who they’ve helped publish in the past and see if they’ve helped move any books I really like, and send out query letters to them. Apparently it can take up to six months or longer just to hear back. I think the best way for me to do this is in batches. I’ll send out 6-8 at a time and wait to hear back. There’s no point in doing more than that because if something about my approach is not right then I want to avoid shooting myself in the foot by contacting all my potential options while still in the learning process. Other than that, all I can really do is send them out, wait to hear back, and work on the novel in the meantime. If all goes well I’d end up with an agent who can help me contact publishers. I would contact them directly, but many of them do not accept personal submissions, so without an agent I’d be cutting the field of options down by a sizeable margin.
That last book I read, ‘The Forest for the Trees’ is coming in handy sooner than I expected. There were lots of good tips on there for querying that I’m going to make use of now. Should be an interesting experience, albeit probably soul crushing too. I’ll let you know how stage one went when I’m done sending them out. Wish me luck!
Thank you for reading,
Benjamin Hawley
Dangerous Day Job 