FAQ

12/10/24
To put it bluntly: querying didn’t go well.

Was it a complete story? Yes.
Was it well-edited and formatted? Also yes.
Was it quite ready for querying? Probably not, no.
Was my query ready? The query letter, yes. The personalized openings, no.

Which brings me to this lovely little bit of hard data from QueryTracker:

Oof, ow, my pride.

What went wrong, you ask? I think a combination of hubris, past querying failures affecting my approach, and bog-standard inexperience.

Here's a few considerations:

Inefficient genre labeling

I kept labeling it comedic fantasy instead of just fantasy or a different subgenre. Regardless of the love Discworld gets, out-and-out comedic or tongue-in-cheek fantasy doesn’t seem to move publisher meters. Most of the more recent successes, like The Dark Profit Saga and Kings of the Wyld, are self-published or independent.

Queried a hair too soon

I queried a month or so too early. I genuinely thought everything was set, but I didn’t give myself time for reflection. I was in a far better place than my first queried novel, a far, far better place, but it needed a bit more time to cook. I started back in May, thinking I was ready to rock. When I sent out those first queries, I had a complete book, but no beta reader feedback.

After the first 15 or so I sent out, quibbles with my manuscript began to rear their ugly heads. I was emboldened when I got a positive reply after a couple weeks, my very first manuscript request ever. But the opening (as all openings always do, forever and always, amen) needed work. I got some reader feedback and ended up adding another 5000+ words to the book to flesh out characters and worldbuilding. But in the end, I should have done one more round of polish before querying.

Tryharding the query letter openings

I leaned too hard into the comedic fantasy bit in the personalized greetings.

The two requests I got were using a simple, amusing intro that gave the tone, both book and author voice, I wanted to give off. I don't necessarily recommend doing this, but somehow, it worked:

Dear Agent,

I saw your call for fantasy novels on the agency site, and as it turns out, I have one of those!

Now, I know what you're thinking: gosh, AADPS, that sounds amazing, but I'd need a voice-riddled query letter with a story premise and its main points of marketability!

Huh, what a coincidence, I have one of those, too!

And from there, I'd launch into the query letter proper. It was quick, fun, to the point, and got me a couple requests!

However, because that worked, I ended up trying too hard with future ones, including one agent I was pretty dang sure was my best shot. It was ultra-personalized and started like this:

Dear Agent,

I think you could represent the ever-loving crap out of my comedic fantasy novel.

Kids, don't try this at home. I was so gung-ho on showing how good of a fit I was, I lost the point of letting the book stand on its own merits.

As cringeworthy and desperate as it looked in hindsight, I did it because I researched the agent and felt it might work, but never again. At the very least, it got me a slightly-personalized rejection letter, and you know you've gotta take all the wins you can. Either way, I think next time, I’m just going to have a set, polished opening, then just release it into the wild.

Not self-publishing from the beginning

My particular niche of the fantasy genre works much better in the indie-publishing scene, and despite my research, I didn’t see that going in. I just wanted to break in and have someone say “hey, yeah, this is good enough for people to pay for” rather than, y’know, assuming it was. When the one full and one partial (both on my older, not quite-as-polished manuscript) came back months later with some helpful feedback but yet another rejection, I kinda knew the writing was on the wall.

So where does this leave my book?

I’m currently plotting out a modest crowdfunding campaign for early next year so I can get a good cover artist, cover design, and some inline illustrations, and then hopefully, publish it through KDP. Until I mash the Kickstarter button, though, I have a few more queries and a publisher submission I’m leaving out there, but I'm not holding my breath. This book is going to come to life one way or another. Stories are stubborn like that.

Will I ever query again?

I think so. Maybe.

I have a couple more projects in the planning stages (indeed, some well into the manuscript stage) that might be more traditionally commercial, but I love the world of this novel and I love writing in it. I had a vacation last week, and I wrote close to 10k words, doing discovery writing and working on the sequel. After a year of personal and creative travail, it felt amazing to fall into a groove and watch a world unfold in front of me again. If I can channel my confidence in my work into a query that checks a bunch of boxes for an agent, I genuinely think I can do it someday.

Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I think it’s just a matter of time, patience, and perseverance. And even if it isn't, I want my kids looking through piles of half-completed manuscripts and worldbuilding when I'm gone, inspired to create something in a world so eager to help us consume.