"Shotgun Approach"?

I was reading this article from Writers Digest about querying multiple agents at once (I'm not there yet, but I've made a short list of 5 agents that I'd like to query when the time comes).

It said:

"With those exceptions out of the way [do not query multiple agents in the same agency OR if an agency has a "no simultaneous submissions" policy], writers should consider querying multiple agents at once. That said, writers should avoid a complete "shotgun approach" to queries."​

What does this mean?

It wasn't explained further; the article goes into answering another question.

 

Never even held one but hear from reliable sources that shotguns spray gunshot over a broad area, rather than the precision of a sniper rifle, with which I am also unfamiliar. It refers to a rather indiscriminate approach to a scattering of agents who are probably more concerned about the shotgun you're carrying. That's another way to get their attention.

 

Probably the author is the only person who really knows, but my best guess is that he is advising against sending the manuscript to everybody, without verifying if they're even interested in that type of submission.

eg: sending your children's picture book to a math textbook publisher, because why not.

 

that's a good start! when are you going to collect the other 45?

basically good advice says not to shotgun your query, at least not at first. it's a bit of a flow chart. i'll try to explain.

first, get your querying kit ready. you will need:

• a loose template for the opening paragraph of your letter. you'll be customizing this to each agent you query to prove that you did your research and introducing your story by title and genre. this can be about 50 words.
• a banging 100 word pitch of your book. you can squeeze this up to about 125 but really, no more than that. (this will probably be the most difficult bit of writing you have ever done up to this point.)
• a 50-ish word bio paragraph introducing you, your publishing experience, if you have any, your relevant life experience that applies to the manuscript you're querying, and a statement that describes where you are in your novel writing career like "this is my first novel."
• your hard limit on the query letter, including salutation and your name, is 250 words.
• prepared files for the first 5 pages, the first 10 pages, and the first 25 pages of your book. this page count assumes manuscript format--Times New Roman 12 point, double-spaced pages, 1" margins all around. end on a complete sentence. if you have to choose between being 10 words short or 20 words long, go short.
• a max 500 word synopsis that tells the story from beginning to end, spoilers included. (this bit of writing will also test you.)
• your list of about 50 agents (some people say more than this, but I don't agree with those people and as you may know, I have many opinions.)
• a way to keep all this stuff organized so you can prepare a query package relatively swiftly. (I used a gmail account to do queries, so I used GDocs to hold my relevant documents. it made things much simpler.)

now you're ready to query. I suggest starting off gently. so for round one, pick three to five agents from your list, double check their requirements, and send them a query package based on their guidelines. Never send attachments unless directly and specifically instructed to do so. everything is pasted directly into the body of the email. usually it's query letter, sample pages, synopsis but if the agent wants the synopsis before the sample pages, do that.

now you wait and see what happens with those query packages. give it two weeks.

if they all come back with form rejections, and the reply is swift, there might be a problem with your query pitch. reshape it and try 3-5 agents again.

if you get a rejection that has personalized feedback, decide if you want to alter anything about your query or pages. Then start slowly again, 3-5 agents.

if you get a single partial or full request, you might also want to send out another batch of 3-5 queries while you're putting that request together. if you get two...oh yeah. up your next batch to ten, and send out a fresh batch of ten the next week.

when you get an agent offering, you're expected to ask for two weeks to make a decision. let me say that again. You. Are. Expected. To take two weeks before you answer. if an agent pushes you on this? hang up without a word. but if they're reputable they know what happens next.

and that's you going to every single agent who has an open query at any stage and letting them know that you have an offer, and that you are notifying them in case they would like to offer too. Lots of them will congratulate you and step aside. but some of them might want to offer as well, and then you have a decision to make.

And that's querying! I hope this helped.

 

This the part where I admit to confusion.

My impression from this forum and local colleagues is that 2 weeks never happens. They're usually waiting months, sometimes years, for responses.

So the number one question that's floating around is about multiple simultaneous submissions very much because waiting for actual responses from 500 submissions would probably mean dying of old age if these are done in 50-submission waves.

But then I hear the opposite, and I'm trying to reconcile the advice with real world reports.

Do you have any suggestions?

 

for a query letter and first five pages? really? they didn't actually mean partial or full manuscript requests? because yeah requests can take a long time, but queries really shouldn't.

 

Query letters yes. To Agents and Publishers, depending on the project.

A lot of my first person contacts who are self publishing, their decision was based on simply never hearing back from the majority of Trad players, and then a couple of years have passed, and they have to move forward.

Like them, I'm considering Trad first; but, watching their experience over the last half decade has reinforced the importance of being able to change plan as I go, and be prepared to self pub.

One possible complication is that I'm in Canada, so maybe a disproportionate number of American agents and publishers just flat out ignore Canadian submissions but don't say so on their submission guidelines?

 

Absolutewrite (currently down while they switch servers) has a really excellent forum where people swap querying experiences. The general trend was some agents responded quickly, others slowly, and others never (as a general rule, after 3-6 months you can politely poke an agent (unless they specifically state otherwise), but beyond that, you can assume a no response is probably a rejection.) Not many people were submitting directly to publishers, but I imagine they might take longer due to the added levels of burocracy. The idea behind staggered query batches is not to wait for every single response to come in but to strike a balance between 'getting a feel for how your query is landing before sending it out to everyone' and 'taking 30 years to query everyone'. 2-4 week batches tend to work well enough for that purpose, most people have some responses at that point.

 

huh! that's really different from when i was querying, but it was about five years ago.

This isn't a thing. you don't have to worry about this.

 

It means using your MS as spam. Sending your work to someone whom you know has no interest whatsoever clogs up the system and makes everyone miserable.