Querying

From publishers to literary agents querying is probably one of the most frustrating aspects of the publishing journey.

So you have completed your story, you're word count is epic, your story is ready to go out, but how do you get people specifically literary agents and publishers to want to read it, and then read more?

The first stage is to have a profile, an author profile, and no not just the kind on Amazon. You need an online presence. The first step should be to set up a twitter account, reach out to people and connect to those that are specific to your journey, readers, other authors, agents, publishers. Be mindful that if you just start adding people and trying to build your following with others that aren't on the same journey two things will happen:

• Your feed will fill up with nonsense on top of nonsense; and
• Twitter will view your account as suspicious and stop you from following pending an investigation.

So be mindful as a way of an example you can find my twitter account with the following handle @book_ant (https://twitter.com/book_ant).

The next step is repeat this on the other social media channels, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and even Linkedin. Once your social media presence is up and running start posting but post useful items, advertise your book, talk about your journey, but be positive, don't post negatively, nor criticise.

Once you have started building your social media presence there are two other options, one is to begin writing a blog, the second is to build a website both can be done very cheaply.

The second stage is to begin drafting the following:

• Query Letter
• Synopsis
• Pitch
• Biography

Have a look at what has worked for authors before. Place it all into one document. Once all has been drafted join QueryTracker online for free. Here you can find all agents and publishers that are open to submissions, you can filter by genre and you can keep track of who you have applied to.

I have found QueryTracker to be good for querying, and with the document I mentioned before with the query letter etc. you can copy and paste the information into the forms that the agents present. This can be a gift and ensure you have all of that done before signing up, because otherwise you will get tired and frustrated. From my perspective I try and submit at least one query a day, other days I will take a bit of time and look at the agent profile, look at their website, look at specifically what they are looking for before querying, it is important you do not use a blanket approach.

Other than it it takes perseverance, don't let rejections get the best of you, keep your chin up and keep moving forward!