What I learned after a year of querying
About my own experience. Things I'd tell the person I was 2 years ago.
Tag @archangelbelletti if sharing on Instagram.
Agents will reject you for a number of reasons that are, in all probability, 60% out of your control.
You'll often have no clue why they reject you because they won't personalize the rejection
However, according to videos, among the reasons why an agent could reject you, there are: they don't like the book enough to spend months revising it with you, they don't know many editors who they can submit it to, they have a similar book in their list already, they didn't like your writing because they don't vibe with it I guess
And in general most of them are linked to taste and personal opinions
Where you put the specifics of your book (word count etc.) doesn't really matter unless specified in guidelines, but do put it there
You're not a prodigy writer
You're also not a terrible one
Your work is actually professional.
Many people who do know about querying will tell you opposite things such as "don't personalize your query!" or "personalize your query!". Follow what you think it's best. I now personalize all my queries.
Shelving a book isn't going to destroy your career.
Don't shelf too fast, though. Don't stop giving chances when you know there are more out there.
That one book isn't your whole life. You'll write more books and you'll love them all.
No one really knows how many agents is too many agents to query. Some say 20. Some say 30. Some 50, some 100. It really just depends.
QueryTracker Pro helps especially if you're looking for agents that will send personalized rejections, and to see how long an agent takes to reply in general.
People will constantly ask you how querying is going and you will have to repeat a billion times that querying is a process too slow to be saying something new every time you meet them. You're sending out queries. That's what you're doing. And that's enough.
It will seem unfair. Some people who didn't do their research will get personalized queries such as "I don't take the genre you submitted", and you won't, even if you did do all things well. It happens.
Reading the posts and following other people who query will initially feel like part of the work but it's actually more for your spirit than for your work
Rewriting your query is really helpful. A story can be told in a lot of ways, and maybe you just need that one way that fits yours.
No one will teach you exactly how it works, but you'll learn a lot through videos by people who are in the industry!
I actually don't understand why research on Publisher Marketplace pro or what it's called it important. Maybe that's why I've been rejected all these times? No clue.
I don't really find PitMad helpful, but it made me want to read a lot of unpublished books. I find it more useful for self-pub than trad, absurdly enough.
More is just opinion in this field than you think. There are fewer rules than you can imagine. No, an info-dump won't kill your career, because many bestsellers are info-dumpy at the beginning.
It will be hard in the "I feel bad about myself" way, it really will. But you'll also have great people with you, that hold your hand through it, too, like @dallas-antonio-writes.
