The Query Trenches | An Interview with E.M. Anderson

In this series, “The Query Trenches,” we will get an insight to what today’s querying landscape looks like for a variety of authors seeking to traditionally publish.

There are two sides to publishing a book: The creative side and the business side. The first step, of course, is writing a book, which is the creative side. But the business side is actually publishing the book and getting it to readers. And the first step of getting published is getting a literary agent. To do that, authors must query, a process where you send a quick overview of your book, sample pages, and a synopsis to agents so they can get a sense of whether they’re interested in your work and representing you. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Except it takes months to even get a response. Longer to get representation. Many authors have suffered through the trenches, but no two journeys look the same.

This interview is with E.M. Anderson, who is currently querying an adult contemporary fantasy book and has a piece in this edition of Windmill!

Thank you so much for doing this interview! First, why don’t you introduce yourself and the book you’re currently querying.

Thank you for having me! I’m E.M. Anderson (she/her), or E, and I write contemporary fantasy. Right now I’m querying The Many Buried Things of Peter Shaughnessy, an adult contemporary fantasy with paranormal elements. An old man cursed with immortality hunts ghosts to give his long and meaningless life some semblance of purpose but avoids friendships with mortal people who will die someday. When a town endangered by a vengeful spirit adopts him as their own, he has to decide: leave to protect his heart, or stay to save their lives?

As you’re a part of Windmill, you also know something about submitting to literary magazines as opposed to agents. How different are the two processes? Do you find one easier than the other?

One thing is, your sub package looks different. For most lit mags, you need the story document, a brief bio, and maybe a cover letter—though I notice more and more lit mags saying you don’t need a cover letter, especially those that use submissions managers.

For querying agents, you need a query letter, synopsis, and various documents of different lengths (first 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 pages, first chapter, first 3 chapters, etc.), along with the full manuscript, because every agent asks for something a little different. And you want to be prepared in case someone wants pages. Some agents—especially those using a query manager—may also ask additional questions, anything from “why are you the right person to tell this story” to “what books would yours sit beside on the shelf at a bookstore” to “what’s your star sign.” So when it comes to actually submitting, I think lit mags are often easier and less stressful to submit to.

But the research is also different, especially if you write genre fiction. Many literary agents have a diversified wishlist, so it’s easier to find a decent number of agents who are looking for your age group and genre. In contrast, lit mags are often much more restricted as to what genre they accept, and many of them have limited word counts. So even if you find a magazine that takes, say, steampunk, you may not be able to submit an existing steampunk story—even if it sounds like a perfect fit for this mag otherwise—because the mag only wants pieces between 3000 and 5000 words, and maybe your story is 2000 words. So the research into lit mags can be a lot more time-consuming simply because it takes so much longer to find somewhere that accepts your genre AND seems like a good fit AND allows for your word count.

Additionally, while simultaneous submissions are standard in querying, in the world of lit mags it’s perfectly normal and accepted to disallow simultaneous subs. So that limits how many mags you can submit to at once, or it means doing still more research to find only places that do allow simultaneous submissions, if that’s your preference.

You’ve also queried before. Have you noticed any difference from the first time you queried vs. how the querying landscape looks now?

This question makes me laugh-cry, because I think many people have noticed a difference…but the differences they’re noticing were totally normal for me when I originally queried.

Background: I queried my debut, The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher, between late June 2020 and early April 2022. Around the start of 2022, I started seeing people talk about how much harder querying was now than it was a year ago. People talked about long wait times and a lack of responses, and I was just like

My whole query experience the first time around was long wait times and a lack of response! At one point, I had five or six fulls out with various agents, and all of them were at least six months old, and most of them were nearly a year old. And my agented friends—even recently agented friends—were horrified. And I was like… is this not normal for the times we’re in? No? Okay, cool, I guess it’s just me.

(Weirdly, I had much faster responses for the first few months spent querying Buried Things in summer 2022.)

So people are saying it’s different, and overall maybe it is, but long response times or a lack of response have been the norm for me all pandemic. And it seems like they’re the norm now. If you’re looking for query advice, it’s generally going to be more useful if it comes from someone who’s recently been in the trenches, rather than someone who was in the trenches five years ago. For example, it used to be common advice to query in batches: send 5 to 10 queries, wait for response, and then decide whether to send more queries or adjust your query package, based on your request rate and agent feedback. Now, if you send 5 to 10 queries and wait, you’re going to be waiting absolutely forever…and you probably won’t get sufficient feedback to tell whether your query package is the reason you’re not getting requests.

As anyone who has ever queried knows, this process tends to have a lot of highs and lows. Can you talk about what your experience has been with that emotional whiplash?

Oh my god, 2020-2021 was the worst. I cried over every rejection, and I absolutely sobbed over rejections on fulls. I had a call with an agent at one point and was flying high beforehand, but when that call turned out not to be an offer, I came crashing down. That was probably the worst part of my original time in the trenches. I felt weirdly ashamed that it wasn’t an offer, even though I knew not all calls are offers. And although the call gave me a lot of useful information about the industry, it also left me questioning my genre and despairing that my timing would always, always, always be off.

It’s just really weird, querying. Like, you think you know how you’ll react to different things in the trenches, but you end up reacting in unexpected ways. I’ve felt despair over full requests, because I didn’t think they’d lead to anything, because other requests hadn’t. Even though sobbing over every rejection made me feel stupid and melodramatic, lowkey I was like, “Keep ‘em coming, agents, this is like free therapy in the year of our lord 2020.” I felt cautiously optimistic about my call with my publisher, but at the end of it I literally asked, “Is this an offer?” because even though it seemed like an offer call, I didn’t want to be presumptuous after my earlier experience with the other call. And I ugly-cried when I received the countersigned contract, because even though I was happy to have a book deal, I was (and am) so sad that my grandfather didn’t live to see that.

Oddly enough, a rejection on a full was one of the highlights of my querying journey that first time. The agent really loved the manuscript but felt they didn’t have the skills or connections to sell it. I’d had a lot of “loved it, but this isn’t marketable” rejections by then, but the reframing of it as “it’s not that the book isn’t marketable, it’s that I cannot market it” left me without the existential dread of other rejections. As other agents had, this agent ended the rejection with “please query me again if you have another project in the future,” but they also added “but I really hope you find an agent with this one!” Again, that addition was such a small thing, but it was so helpful. Because, you know, every time an agent says, “Unfortunately I can’t take this on even though I loved it, but please do query me again in the future,” it’s like, that’s nice, it really is, but…I want to be done querying. I don’t want to have to query you again in the future. So an agent acknowledging that made me feel so much better. While I was still bummed that it was a rejection, that particular rejection left me feeling grateful and hopeful rather than despairing.

Like I said, you never know how you’re going to react to things in the trenches.

Querying is a highly emotional process, what are some of your go-to self-care tips?

I’ll let you know when I have some hahaha. Having a book coming out helps? I’ve been so much less emotional about querying this time around, and I’m positive it’s because I’m just letting the trenches do their thing while focusing on The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher. I still get sad and worried when I get a rejection on a full or partial, but overall it’s so much less disheartening than my first time in the trenches.

(I’ve barely cried at all so far!)

Having someone you can privately vent to is massively important. Not only are you going to be upset when you get rejections, or despairing when you go months without any response at all, but you’ll probably be envious of people who make offer announcements while you’re querying—especially if you’ve been in the trenches longer than they have. It’s okay to feel those feelings! But you need a space where you can safely vent your frustrations and have your feelings validated without burning bridges. Do not try to tell people they shouldn’t celebrate good news because it makes you feel bad, but do allow yourself to feel bad and work through that feeling.

Additionally, if seeing happy announcements hurts you, make as much use as you can of social media mute functions so you won’t see these announcements in the first place. You probably won’t catch everything, but muting words like “agented,” “signed,” etc. can make a big difference to how much you see.

Finally, many writers plan out a treat or reward for rejections. I haven’t tried this yet, because I suck at treating myself. My “reward” for getting rejections this time around has been to send more queries, which is basically like the opposite of a reward. But many of my friends will do things like put a little money in a jar for each rejection and then treat themselves to dinner when they get so many rejections, or they’ll buy a sweet or a coffee for each rejection. Something they can look forward to when they get rejections they would otherwise not look forward to at all. I can’t speak for the people who use this method, but from the outside it does seem like it helps at least a little bit, and I really do want to try it some time.