"How do I know my book is ready to query?"

Have confidence! But be humble. Dream big! But lower your expectations. Oh, publishing...

Frasier has an idea for what will no doubt be the most important novel ever published in the history of the world. He whips up a draft, slaps together a query explaining his own genius, and mass queries a hundred agents. He sits back and waits for the offers of representation to come rolling in.

Instead, he finds himself buried in rejections because clearly not a single agent on this earth can recognize true brilliance.

Meanwhile, Niles has an idea for what he thinks is a good story, maybe even a great story, and he spends years perfecting the draft, picking over every sentence, revising and editing and scrapping entire chapters. He has a list of ideal agents and a query that he’s polished fifty times over—but no, he hasn’t queried an agent yet because hang on, maybe the catalyst could be bigger and also he just had an idea for chapter seven and maybe he just needs to rewrite the whole thing and start querying next year.

Looks like neither Frasier or Niles are getting agents anytime soon.

How can you find the happy medium here? Because there is one, I promise. The funny thing is, I think the root of these two writers’ problems is actually the same thing.

Looking for help on your query? Check out the offer at the end of this newsletter!

Frasier has the mentality (whether he knows it or not) of “well, the agent is going to sell this to an editor who’s gonna edit it anyway and by that logic no manuscript that gets an agent is publication-ready so I might as well start pitching.” True, no manuscript is publication ready, but let’s put a pin in that thought for now. Niles, on the other hand, has the mentality of “this book has to be a flawless diamond and I will not let an agent lay eyes on it until that happens.” (Perfectionism is futile and self-destructive, but that’s a conversation for another newsletter.)

Do you see the problem? The root of this issue is actually the same thing for Frasier and Niles. An author cannot write and edit a ready-to-publish book alone. Frasier handles this by saying “screw it” and querying prematurely. Niles handles it by using it as an excuse to never take the leap. 

Some folks out there might disagree with me on this, but I feel pretty strongly that it’s true: can you write a great book alone? Yeah, obviously. Can you self-edit? Of course! And you should. But a book that’s ready for publication? That needs a team. Editors, copyeditors, proofreaders. We authors cannot be all of these things.

And I do know some authors who are also editors and copyeditors—but they do not edit their own books because they know the importance of getting other eyes on the story. You might be the most eagle-eyed copyeditor in the world but when it’s your draft, when it’s 90,000 words that came out of your mind that you’ve been writing and rewriting and crossing out and rewriting for months? Those eagle eyes just aren’t going to spot the problems they would spot on someone else’s draft. 

Let’s put it this way. Toni Morrison, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author, was also a senior editor at Random House. Was she the editor, copyeditor, and proofreader of her own novels? No. Do you think you’re a better writer than Toni Morrison? Right. 

Okay so what are you supposed to do, hire a team of editors before you query? No. Because remember, Frasier and Niles are both wrong about some stuff but they’re also right about some stuff. Niles is right in that you should be careful and be picky and set a high bar. Frasier is right in that at some point you’re going to have to take the leap and start sending this thing to agents. 

The whole writing and publishing a novel thing is often compared to running a marathon. Maybe the most important part of training for a marathon is knowing how to pace yourself. Runners, including elite, experienced runners, who don’t pace themselves just right will sometimes experience what’s called “bonking.” Very brief biology lesson: bonking is a word used to describe the drastic drop in energy levels that might come with muscle cramps and brain fog, and it happens when your body uses up all of the glycogen stores in your liver and muscles. For marathon runners, it tends to happen around mile 20. It’s like if your car runs out of gas. You can’t power through. There’s nothing to power with!

Authors like Frasier sprint for twenty miles and then bonk when there’s still six miles to go. Authors like Niles have been training for a marathon for years, they’ve actually gone on training runs where they ran thirty miles, but they can’t quite work up the courage to register for a race.

Think of finishing your first draft as hitting mile 20. That’s an enormous achievement. But remember, you’ve still got 6.2 miles to go. And listen, it’s perfectly fine to start researching agents now, but be careful. I see a lot of authors do this and I very nearly did it myself when I was getting ready to query—you will see some dream agent who you’re stalking tweet something like “gee I’d really like to see a heist fantasy in my inbox” and OMG YOUR book is a heist fantasy and this is a SIGN that you need to query RIGHT NOW….no. This isn’t serendipity. And her taste is not going to change. She’ll still want that heist fantasy in a few months. You’re approaching mile 20, not the finish line. Hold back. Don’t bonk.  

So let’s go back to the starting line. How do you know when your book is ready to query? Here’s what I recommend you do.

First, should go without saying, but finish the draft. Don’t query when you’ve still got a few chapters to write. Don’t ‘test the waters.’ Don’t tell yourself “oh well agents take so long to respond, by the time they request a full I’ll be---” no. Don’t self-sabotage like that. 

Second, put the finished draft away and don’t look at it for at least a week. This is hard but it’s also a good way to test your patience. And it’s necessary for step three, which is…

Read through it slowly and take notes. Be as honest and critical of yourself as you can. Write down all the issues, from big picture to sentence level. 

Revise your book. Again, take your time. I have been guilty of looking at my own notes, looking at the draft, and saying to myself eh, it’s really not THAT big of a problem. Yes it is, quit being lazy, revise it. 

Next, find a few critique partners. Not your mom! (Unless your mom is really REALLY good at constructive criticism.) Find a beta reader willing to be honest with you.

And I’m giving this next part it’s own step because I think this is VITAL in knowing when YOUR book is ready: critique other writers’ books. Critique books that other writers are hoping to query. Why is this so important? Remember that whole thing I said about how no author can write and edit a publication-ready book alone? I stand by it. But we can definitely improve our self-editing chops. And the best way to do that is to edit a book that you did not write. You will learn so much about plotting, about character development, about world-building, even about grammar. And you will take what you learned and use it next time you edit your own book, and your self-editing is gonna be a whole lot tougher and a whole lot more effective. 

I joined my first critique group after finishing a draft of my very first (never agented or published) novel. One of the other authors had just signed with an agent and completed a revision based on that agent’s notes, and she wanted me to read the new version before sending it back to her agent and going on submission. No pressure. I have a vivid memory of opening the document, reading the first page, and thinking oh my god. Her writing is beautiful. I have no idea how to critique this. 

It’s scary! It’s intimidating! And to be honest, I failed her. It wasn’t just that the book was really really good and pretty polished already. I was afraid to give an actual critique because I didn’t want to insult her. I didn’t understand yet that critiquing is not insulting, or at least, it’s not when it’s done right. I sent her my “notes.” She read them and sent me the nicest email thanking me and then encouraging me to not hold back next time. And that’s when I realized I had failed her - and myself, because I’d had this opportunity to really analyze a good book and figure out ways to make it better and I hadn’t done it. I couldn have learned so much. I never made that mistake again. 

So yeah, critiquing other authors’ books and helping them get query ready is, in my opinion, a super important step in knowing when your own book is query ready. 

Next step is obviously gonna be revising your book again based on your beta feedback. If you’re Frasier, check your ego. Do not make any decisions about what you will and will not incorporate from these notes within the first 24 hours. You will almost certainly have a kneejerk reaction to certain suggestions, especially those that would require a lot of revising work to implement, and maybe that stems from your belief that your book is READY (it’s not) or maybe it stems from your desperation to just query already, but if you want to give your book it’s best chance, give yourself at least a full day to just think about the the suggestions. Be brutally honest with yourself. Would they make your book better? 

Now if you’re Niles, here’s a great opportunity to thicken your skin. Look, agents are going to reject your book, editors are going to reject your book, some editor is going to acquire your book and then edit it, multiple times, copyeditors and proofreaders are going to point out allll your mistakes and then readers are going to read your book and write reviews on Goodreads and make Booktok videos and...it never stops. It never stops. If you want to do this, I’m not saying you need to detach yourself emotionally from your book, that’s impossible. But you have to get used to criticism, and now’s your chance to start. Definitely worth pointing out that you certainly don’t have to take all of the suggestions you get. And one beta reader might contradict another beta reader. Talk it out with the group, go over your options, bounce ideas off of them. (I seriously cannot overemphasize the value of a critique group.) 

Once that revision is done, are you ready to query? Maybe. I wish I had a more definite answer for you but the truth is, your book may or may not be ready. And only you can decide that. What I can tell you is that the more you write and develop your writer gut, as in, that instinct that tells you “oh THAT suggestion is great,” or “hmm, something about this story still doesn’t feel quite right,” the better you’ll get at knowing when your book is as ready as it can be. If you’re really worried about typos and small line level mistakes, get one of your betas to do a final proofread - at the very least, I do suggest you ask someone to proofread those first few chapters, since that’s going to be what many if not most of the agents you query read. To be clear, a single typo on page 2 of an otherwise fantastic book is not going to cause an agent to reject a book. I know a lot of writers think agents are looking for a reason to reject but I do not think that is accurate. I think they’re looking to fall in love with a story. If your story has everything they’re looking for but you have a to instead of too on page two, they will not care.

So…are you ready? Need some help with that query? Send it to me! My query critique comes with unlimited reads for a flat fee of $100. That means you send me your query, I send you my critique, you revise and send it back to me for another pass, repeat as many times as needed until that thing is as shiny as it can be. If you’re interested, email me at mischubooks at gmail.com.