All of my querying advice in one place! Plus: cheese? In cookies? YES!

Friends -- Okay fine, you can call them a cocktail cracker if you like, but Dorie Greenspan calls them cookies, so I will too. (I'll put the cookie recipe up top, so that all of you who have no interest in how to query an agent can take the cookie recipe and move right on). And yes, I'm always telling you about Dorie Greenspan's cookie recipes at this time of year, but I can't help it -- she has great cookies, and I don't want to deprive you of them! These are great to bring to a party; I know that I always want more savory stuff at parties this time of year, because there are always tons of sweets around. Also, they're very easy to throw together (especially if you have a food processor) and you can make the dough well in advance, keep the dough in the freezer, and then just slice and bake when you're ready to make them. This recipe uses a combo of smoked Gouda and sharp cheddar; I've also used all sharp cheddar plus a touch of smoked paprika.

Smoky, Cheesy Cookies
(from Dorie's Cookies, a delightful book to give someone or put on your own holiday gift list)

Ingredients:
1 stick (8 tablespoons, 4 ounces, 113 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
4 ounces (113 grams) cold smoked Gouda, cut into tiny cubes
2 ounces (57 grams) sharp cheddar, shredded
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 1/4 cups (170 grams) all purpose flour

Instructions:
Put the butter, cheese, salt, pepper, and cayenne into a food processor and pulse until the butter is all in small bits. Add the flour and pulse again, until the dough is moist but the butter and cheese aren't all blended in (go slowly, you don't want it to be too uniform). If you're doing this by hand, grate all of the cheese instead of cutting it into cubes, and cut it all together with a pastry cutter or forks, before combining it with your fingers.

Turn the dough out onto parchment paper and knead it until you can shape it into a ball. Divide the dough in half. Now, Dorie says to pat each half into a disk, because she then wants you to roll the disks out and cut the cookies with a cookie cutter, but for me, the great thing about these cookies is that you can roll them into a log, and then slice and bake them, and it's super easy. If you want uniform and perfect looking cookies, pat each half into a disk now, place the dough between two pieces of parchment paper, and roll to a thickness of 1/4 inch, and then slide onto a baking sheet to refrigerate or freeze it. But if you want easy, roll each half into a log of about 1 1/2 inches in diameter (it helps to get your log sort of made, then wrap in plastic wrap and roll more until it's a bit more uniform). Then wrap in plastic wrap and toss in the freezer or refrigerator. (I like to put them in the refrigerator for an hour at least, and turn once after thirty minutes, so the log is a little more uniform, and then put in the freezer for easy slicing).

When you're about to bake, center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Slice the cookies to a thickness of about 1/4 of an inch, and put them on the baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake for about 14-17 minutes (rotating the baking sheet about halfway through baking), and let them cool completely. (If you're going to roll and cut them, cut them with a 1 1/2 inch cookie cutter, and bake for 16-18 minutes).

Enjoy!

And now, all about querying! (For those who don't know: in order to get an agent to represent your book, you send what's called queries to them, for the most part over email -- this consists of a write up of your book and a bio, and then whatever else the agent asks for, usually the first 5-10 pages or first chapter). I wrote a form of this on Twitter last year, but I wanted to put it all together, and in a more easily linkable form, so I can refer people to it. A note: this is not the Only Way To Do Things, there are many different ways to do this! This is just the advice I give people when they ask me, so I wanted to be able to share it all with you. And as a bonus, my query for The Wedding Date is below!

First off, a lot of people say to not think about agents until you have a manuscript that's as perfect as you can get it, and while I absolutely agree to not start actually querying until your manuscript is revised and revised again (and again), I found it much easier to start my agent research relatively early on. That way, when I was ready to start querying, I didn't have to start from scratch, and the whole process didn't feel overwhelming to me. Plus, if you're doing it gradually over months, you can get a lot more information than if you do it over a few days, or even over a week or two. The easiest way to do this is to make yourself a spreadsheet -- it doesn't have to be anything fancy, just name of agent/name of their agency/their email address/their submission guidelines/key authors they represent are the big ones (I also included their website and twitter feed so I could easily check those). And when I started this, I didn't worry about filling in all of those boxes -- I would just plop an agent's name in the spreadsheet if I saw it somewhere (I had a notes section of my spreadsheet, so I would usually add a note about where I saw their name/why I added them) and go back later to add the other stuff.

Where do you find the agents to add to the spreadsheet? Lots of different places, but I started with the acknowledgement sections of some of my favorite books (and ones in my genre). People usually thank their agent, look for that, put their name in your spreadsheet, and look for the next book. Then there are websites like Querytracker and Agent Query, which list even more agents, and can tell you who represents authors (if they don't have acknowledgements, or if they don't thank their agent (double check everything from there, though -- there's sometimes outdated information). Publisher's Marketplace is also a great place to find information about agents, though it costs money to join it; I know people who joined for just a month to gather information (I did not, but it really is a great source of info). Here's some good advice from Kate McKean's newsletter about that (though I disagree with Kate on one point -- agent websites are often not up to date or particularly useful when it comes to lists of their clients; some are! but many are either outdated or hard to navigate. I don't blame agents for this; they have very busy jobs, and I hate updating my website too! Just make sure their website isn't the only place you check for info on their clients).

I also found Twitter invaluable here -- I put all of the agents in my spreadsheet into a Twitter list (you can make secret ones), so I could easily check in on what they were tweeting about, especially if they talk about the kinds of books they're looking for. This is also a great way to find other agents to query -- agents often chat with other agents on Twitter, see who they're talking to, look them up and see if that person might be a good fit for you, and then plunk them into your spreadsheet. Also, social media is really helpful to find out more info about an agent; this is someone who will hopefully be a business partner for you for a long time, and you want to know if they seem like a good person for you to work with. And this is especially relevant for those of you who have any marginalized backgrounds; most of publishing is very white, and the vast majority of the agents I queried were white, and I wanted to make sure these were people I could trust with my work. Another thing to remember, though, is not all agents are active on social media; this doesn't mean they're a bad agent! there should be lots of other info out there about them and their clients and their sales, so look those up.

Now, once you've got a bundle of agents in your spreadsheet (I'd say around 30-40, but lower and higher are both fine), do your research on them (this is where the Publisher's Marketplace subscription would come in handy). Find out who they represent, where they work, what their submission guidelines are. But also: make sure they're legit. Here are a few great links to help you figure that last part out. Both of these links are from Jennifer Laughran's blog, she's a kidlit agent and great person for all writers to follow on Twitter, no matter what you write, because she always has interesting things to say about agenting and publishing. Kate McKean, the agent whose newsletter I linked above, is also a great follow, no matter what you write, and of course, my own wonderful agent, Holly Root, always has smart things to say.

This do your research phase is good timing for when you've sent your manuscript out to friends/beta readers and are waiting for feedback -- you can use that nervous energy to research the hell out of agents and make your spreadsheet all perfect. And this is good practice for finding something else to do for all of the interminable waiting that is part of publishing, because I'm here to tell you it happens over and over and over again, no matter where you are in the process. [You may ask: Jasmine, are you writing this long newsletter because you have nervous energy waiting for something? Oh wow what a rude question!!!!!]

Now: you have to write your query. There are a lot of great resources for that on the internet (Query Shark is an excellent place to start) so I'm not going to give a ton of advice about it, but just a few things. You want your query to read like the back of a book: short; to the point; highlighting some of the main conflict of the book. You want it to draw people in, so they want to know "and then what happens?" or think "Ooh, I want to read that!" at the end of the query. To help with this, have a few people who didn't read your manuscript read your query and to see what they think. Here is my query for The Wedding Date, I hope it helps some!

I hope you'll be a good fit for THE WEDDING DATE, my 89,000 word contemporary romance novel.

After being stuck in an elevator with Alexa Monroe for fifteen minutes, Drew Nichols charms her into being his last minute date—and pretend girlfriend—for his ex-girlfriend’s wedding. Workaholic Alexa, chief of staff to the Berkeley mayor, needs a night out and a reason for a new dress, and commitment-phobe pediatrician Drew needs a date so he won’t be pitied and pounced on at the wedding. But after a night of passion after the wedding, Drew can’t stop thinking about Alexa, even after he flies back home to Los Angeles.

Alexa isn’t sure if she can handle Drew’s carefree attitude toward relationships, but they have such a good time together—in and out of the bedroom—she’s willing to give this “fun” thing a try. Along the way, Drew crashes Alexa's best guy friend’s birthday party, Alexa meets Drew's favorite patient, he makes fun of her terrible singing voice, and they eat lots of doughnuts and tacos.

They grow to trust and rely on one another, but they panic in opposite ways when they realize their feelings are getting stronger than they bargained for. After everything blows up, neither of them knows if they can find a way back together.

[Bio: don't stress about this! You don't need publishing credits etc. etc. Just say who you are]

(Sidenote: as published it was shorter than 89,000 words, I always come in too long).

Okay, now you have your list, and your query, and you're all ready to send them out, right! Well, not quite yet. First, look up all of these agents again, Google and on social media. Lots of agents change agencies/quit/close to queries, so you want to make sure all of your information is most up to date. Second: pay very close attention to submission guidelines; they're all different, so get them right. Some agents just want a query, some want a query and the first five pages, some want a query and the first ten, almost none of them want attachments, etc. Do exactly what they ask -- this is not the way to try to stand out. Third, I found it very helpful to have ranked tiers of agents -- I did this based on who I thought, based on my research, what they said they were looking for, their other clients, etc, would be best for me and my book. Yes, of course pay attention to whether agents have sold books, but the amount of high dollar deals etc. wasn't the priority for me there; it was if this person had both the interest, the capability, and the connections to want my romance novel about a black woman and to represent it well. (Another sidenote: I was right on this -- of the three offers I got from agents, all were in my top tier. I got lots of rejections too, though, from all of the tiers!).

Now start sending them out -- I've seen people say to start with lower tiered agents first, to see if your query works, but I disagree with this advice, based on the above. My higher tiered agents were the ones most likely to like my book, I got plenty of rejections from lower tiers, so if I'd started with them, I would have thought there was something wrong with my query. Just get plenty of eyes on your query and your initial pages before you send them out -- find writer friends in forums, in Facebook groups, in real life meet ups, etc. etc. Send out queries in groups of five or so, and send out a few more when you get rejections. (And now your spreadsheet can have columns for when you sent the query and any response, so you can track it all easily). This process is hard and often takes a lot of time, and you have all of my sympathies. People often say to work on the next thing when you're doing it, and I think that's really good advice, but I couldn't take it -- I needed a mental break between finishing one big project and starting another, and it's fine if you need one too. Agents will ask you if you're working on something else, so at least have an idea of what the next thing will be, but it's okay if you need to binge watch TV or knit fifteen hats or learn to make croissants for a few months; figure out what works for you. It's excellent practice for all of those other times in publishing where you'll be waiting for something! Also, I know there are lots of stories out there about people who got an offer the week after they started querying -- if this doesn't happen to you, please do not lose hope! It took four and a half months from when I started querying to when I got my first offer, and I got a whole bundle of rejections (on the query and on the full manuscript) in the interim!

And my biggest piece of advice, for all of this: take your time. Take your time revising, and making your agent list, and writing your query. Do it right, check your work, don't feel like there's some timer next to you making you get it done now and do it fast fast fast, there is not! I know we look around and see others getting agents and book deals and movie deals and all of that and think we're all falling behind, but it's not true. You have to go at your own pace, do work you're proud of, don't rush it. Don't procrastinate, of course, and when you get to the point where you're just tinkering with your manuscript and not changing anything of substance, then stop, but don't force a ticking clock on yourself when there isn't one. Hopefully you'll have a long and successful publishing career, and you'll have lots of deadlines to come -- you don't have one right now, and enjoy it!

Good luck to all!
Jasmine
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