#AMQUERYING: an author journey in hashtags
(White text on pink and bright blue geometric background that reads, “#AMQUERYING.”)
Hello, readers! Thank you so much for joining me. If you’re here, maybe you yourself are querying, or you’re just curious about this whole publishing ordeal. Full disclosure: I’m pretty new to the whole thing myself, so everything I’m sharing ahead is purely from my personal experience and shouldn’t be taken as “advice.” Still, I hope you’ll at least find this tiny glimpse into my author life interesting. If you think someone in your life would be interested in this blog, too, feel free to share it with them!
#AmWriting
To start from the beginning: I started writing Game Changer, the book I’m currently querying, in September. I wrote bits and pieces of it while I was still working full time, squeezing in one or thousand words late at night or on the weekends. I really started building momentum after I quit my day job in December. I finished my manuscript at about 65,000 words, but after revisions, my total word count sat at about 70,000—which is standard for my book’s genre (adult contemporary romance).
For me, writing the book was the hard part. It was fun! But it was grueling. It was difficult to stay motivated one somedays. There were days where I felt jazzed and could only eek out 200 words. “It be like that sometimes,” as they say. In comparison to writing the book, revisions were a walk in the park, though other authors feel VERY differently on this subject (some writers ABHOR editing; it’s physically painful for them!).
#KissPitch
February 14th was a big day for me. I think about that day and I still get a little buzz from it.
Year round, there’s a series of Twitter “contests” where authors tweet a pitch of their book(s) with specific hashtags and throughout these days, agents and editors peruse the hashtags for pitches. If they “like” the pitch, it means they are asking the author to query them—exciting! You can read more about #PitMad here. There are several offshoots of these contests, one of which is #KissPitch, a similar contest but reserved for romance writers (me!) and writers of women’s fiction.
Leading up to #KissPitch, I spent upwards of 4-5 hours writing pitches in a tweet format, which basically means summarizing my book in 240 characters. If that sounds hard—it was! I think I actually lucked out a bit; I do have some copywriting experience, and I’ve done some social media content creation before. I would argue I have an eye for “hook-y” copy and I’ve spent some time analyzing the romance genre and the current market (a.k.a. reading a lot of romance!). Equipped with all of this, I drafted three tweets. On February 13th, I scheduled them all using Buffer to be posted right at the beginning of the contest… and then I went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up. I rolled over in bed, grabbed my cell phone, and opened Twitter. The frenzy had begun.
By ten or eleven AM (PST), one of my pitches was one of the Top Trending tweets under the #KissPitch hashtag.
(Screenshot of a Tweet that I posted on February 14th during #KissPitch that reads: “Loved ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE? Meeting for the first time after gaming online together for years, Benji and Lara are expecting sparks—that is, until their clashing professional alliances come to light. Which makes attending a wedding together WAY more fun. #KissPitch #CR #OwnVoices.”)
I was astounded. To be clear, I had zero expectations going into this thing. I literally had no idea what I was getting into. I remember sitting down across from my friend Pascale, my hands shaking, as I refreshed my Twitter again. And again. And again. I was blown away at the number of requests I was getting from agents and editors (EDITORS! AT PUBLISHING HOUSES!). By the end of the day, I had over 25 requests for submissions. Ask any of my close friends. They’ll tell you I was freaking. The fuck. Out.
Like, holy. Shit. People actually wanted to read this book.
(By the way, HUGE SHOUT OUT TO MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY for the retweets and the sweet replies!! It was exciting to get attention from agents and editors, but it was even more AMAZING to hear that random Twitter users were excited about it it! I hope all of you will get a chance to hold Game Changer in your hands someday. <3 THANK YOU!)
I went out for a cup of coffee and to get lunch, trembling with adrenaline. Literally trembling. When I got back home, I stared at my query letter again. I revised it. I tweaked it. I tweaked it again. And then I sent out my first batch of query letters.
Holy. Shit. I did it.
That was a huge milestone for me. It still is. I’m not “far” into my publishing journey, but getting to this point is something I’m really proud of. It took a lot of hard work. It’s vulnerable. It’s full of unknowns. It opens you up to questions, rejections, and doubt—but I got here.
#AmQuerying
What is querying? To be brief, it’s like a job application, except you’re applying for an offer of representation from a literary agent. Without a literary agent, there are very limited avenues to getting your book published through traditional publishing (the alternative being self-publishing, which is equally as bad ass and cool!). There are reasons I’m giving traditional publishing a try versus self-publishing, but I won’t get into that. In you’re interested, let me know (comment, send me an e-mail, message me on Facebook or IG, and I’m happy to discuss).
The “application” involves a query letter (symbolically kind of like a cover letter, but that’s about where the similarity ends), sometimes a synopsis fo your book, plus sometimes a sample from your book—”sometimes,” because outside of a query letter, there isn’t… really an industry standard for what an agent “usually” requests. However, these components, for the most part, cover all of the bases among variations in querying fiction (as far as I know).
Most of my query submissions has been facilitated via e-mail or an online form. You send/submit your materials to each individual agent with whom you’re interested in working, and then…
You wait.
This is the absolute hardest part for me.
I’ve submitted a batch of queries since February 14th, and only a portion of those queries have received any kind of response—mostly to express further interest! Yes! I’ve had several agents request my full manuscript to review, plus a few others request longer samples. This is really exciting. Many debut authors rarely get even one reply, if any, because some agencies are so slammed with queries that they only reply to folks whose work they’re interested in further exploring. This means some people may never even get any kind of response from some agencies—not even a no. The waiting period between responses can range between two weeks up to months. I’ve heard of people waiting over six months.
If you’re wondering why I’ve been so quiet on social media lately, it’s because I don’t know what to do with myself right now. Waiting is difficult for me in most contexts, but the waiting for agents to respond is excruciating. Exciting! But excruciating nonetheless. Don’t get me wrong: I’m eternally grateful for the kind of response I’ve already gotten. I am so thankful I got this far; a part of me just knows there is something amazing around the corner, that my patience will be rewarded, and that I’ll get this book into the world someday.
But it doesn’t make time move any faster. And that’s made every single day since #KissPitch feel like an eternity, and that’s really slowed me down.
So what’s next?
Let’s be an Eternal Optimist for a minute and play pretend. :)
In the next weeks or months, I’ll received an offer of representation from an agent who is in love with my story—YES! From that point on, my agent will go on submission and work on pitching my book to various publishing houses. This could take anywhere from months to a year (usually). Under the best circumstances, this means I’ll sign a book deal (maybe a multi-book deal!) and I get paid for my book. Awesome. From there, it may take anywhere from 18 months to two years, and then VOILA! Game Changer will be on shelves at your local indie bookstore, Barnes & Noble, and Target.
Fuck. Yeah.
But until then?
A whole lot of… waiting.
And more writing, of course! (And a lot of compulsively refreshing my e-mail. A LOT.)
If you see me in person, please feel free to distract me, hug me, ask me about the process, tell me you love me/you are proud of me, and/or buy me chocolate, coffee, and a burrito (please feed me, thank you). :)
#AmWriting
The best thing I can do write now is to keep writing. Both my mind and body has been demanding I stop and rest since #KissPitch. I haven’t been able to focus on anything since I started querying, so I’ve only written a whopping 1200 words (of the book following Game Changer, hint hint ;)) since then. I know I need to rest, and I’ve been trying to give myself as much grace as possible to take things easy. I’ve been playing a lot of Pokemon Sword and Stardew Valley, I’ve finished a couple of books, and I’ve been napping and listening to a lot of podcasts to try and keep myself busy. My mood has been okay. I feel really good nowadays. I’m happy to be where I am. I’m so grateful for where my life is right now, in so many ways. Not everybody can be where I’m at, and I feel immensely lucky every day to have what I do. On most days, I feel like I have some kind of charmed life.
To wrap things up, I wanted to give you all an idea of what I’m working on. If it wasn’t clear already, full disclosure, I am only currently writing #ownvoices adult contemporary romance. :)
I’m starting to piece together the plot for the “sequel” for Game Changer. The series (as I have it planned right now) is three books total. I’ve written 1200 words so far. Not much, but it’s a start.
(Photograph of a sunset on a beach with silhouette of a couple sharing a kiss.)
Photo by Ryan Young on Unsplash
This month, I’m also hoping to get started on a series that I’m planning on self-publishing (!!!) this summer. I have three books planned in this series so far, but there’s room to expand it to… a lot more books. The plan is to release two books back-to-back this summer, but we’ll see what I can/cannot pull off and how my traditional publishing path will influence how/when/if this will happen. I’m pretty excited about this series—I already have so much brainstorming done, and I have so many sweet moments already percolating in my mind. If a sweet and sexy summer romance series is totally your jam, make sure you sign up for my author newsletter—I’m sending out a sneak peek with further details this Friday that will only go out to my newsletter subscribers. You don’t want to miss it. Sign up here.
And if you don’t already, make sure you follow me on Instagram to keep getting updates about my life, my writing, and my querying process.
Again, thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your week!