On Querying Literary Agents the Right Way with QueryTracker

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the querying process—you’re not alone.

In this episode of Talking Book Publishing, Kathleen and Adanna sit down with Patrick McDonald, the creator of QueryTracker—the platform that has become the gold standard for querying literary agents. What started as one writer trying to organize his own submissions has grown into one of the most trusted tools in the publishing industry today. 

This conversation pulls back the curtain on the business side of writing—what’s really happening when you hit “send” on that query, and how authors can approach the process more strategically instead of just guessing.

In this episode, we cover:

•  How QueryTracker became an essential tool for authors 
•  What data can tell you about agent behavior and response times 
•  Why querying feels so difficult (and how to make it more manageable) 
•  The biggest mistakes authors make with query letters and comp titles 
•  How QT Critique is helping writers get real, honest feedback 
•  Why persistence—and patience—matter more than you think 

Patrick also shares insights from his upcoming book, The Modern Guide to Querying Literary Agents, built from 20 years of answering authors’ most common questions.

🎧 Listen now and take the guesswork out of querying.

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Transcript

00:00:06 SPEAKER_02
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Talking Book Publishing. I'm Kathleen Kaiser, along with my co -host, Adanna Moriarty. And today we have Patrick McDonald, who is with Curry Tracker, and he's here to talk about a new project that they have put out. And plus, we just learned he has a new book that will be coming out in late summer. So welcome, Patrick.

00:00:29 SPEAKER_01
Thanks for having me. It's real fun to be here.

00:00:32 SPEAKER_02
So why don't we start with talking, just give us a little brief overview of what QueryTracker is. We can go into it later and then tell us about the new service. Okay.

00:00:40 SPEAKER_01
Well, I started QueryTracker about 20 years ago when I was an author trying to get published. That never worked out, but I just saw that it was such an awkward process. There had to be a better way. And my day job was computer programming. So I put something together and it turns out people liked it.

00:00:59 SPEAKER_02
And so now you have the new critique program. Tell us about that.

00:01:03 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, QT Critique is a separate website, and it's where you can critique each other's work. So it's a peer -to -peer critiquing system where you have to earn points by critiquing other people's writing. And once you have enough points, you can post your own. for other people to critique.

00:01:20 SPEAKER_02
And is that live now?

00:01:22 SPEAKER_01
It's live now. And we just added a new service. We had a lot of people asking us if they can have professionals critique their work. But we got with about a dozen literary agents and got them on the site. And now they are doing critiques for people. It doesn't use the point system. They need to get paid for their time. So they'll charge a fee for the critiques. But most of them are pretty inexpensive. $30 for a query letter. Some of them are more, some of them are less. Each agent gets to set their own rates. That sounds cool,

00:01:51 SPEAKER_03
sounds cool, though. It's a hard thing to get someone like an agent to look at your work at all,

00:01:57 SPEAKER_01
let alone give you feedback. And to get the agents to do it, we had to do something kind of different. A lot of them said they don't like giving critiques because they get a lot of blowback online if they say something negative. And they wanted to be as honest as possible. So we came up with the idea that we'll just make them all anonymous. Rory Tracker vets them and makes sure they are legitimate literary agents, but we don't give out who they actually are. So they can be really honest and they don't have to worry about any repercussions from that. So if you want an honest critique, that's what you need to do.

00:02:28 SPEAKER_02
So are they critiquing the type of material they would be buying or just doing general critiquing?

00:02:34 SPEAKER_01
We let them select the types of genres they want to look at. So some of them will just select the genres they're interested in. Some of them are more broader.

00:02:43 SPEAKER_02
And what's been the feedback from the people receiving the critiques?

00:02:46 SPEAKER_01
Pretty good. I was surprised how detailed some of these agents are getting in their critiques.

00:02:50 SPEAKER_02
Like what?

00:02:50 SPEAKER_01
They're just getting a lot of good feedback on how to improve their query letter or their synopsis. We've had some of them hire the agents to do whole chapters.

00:03:00 SPEAKER_03
So if an agent likes what they read, would they then reach out as an agent? to pick up the story, you know, the author?

00:03:10 SPEAKER_01
Or is there... Well, see, one of the other reasons we wanted to go anonymous is we don't want people to try and buy their way to the head of the query line.

00:03:18 SPEAKER_03
Right.

00:03:18 SPEAKER_01
But that being said, I do know of an agent that did sign a client through the system. I was just thinking,

00:03:23 SPEAKER_03
was just thinking, and if they read it and they're like, man, I need this book. Like, I mean, how could they pass it up? You know what I mean?

00:03:32 SPEAKER_01
It could happen, but I don't want people to think they're, like I said, they're not buying their way in. Right. It's for an honest and thorough critique.

00:03:39 SPEAKER_03
I like the idea of the peer to peer critique, too. How do you how do you feel like that's going since you launched? I mean, the agent part is new, right? I mean, it's all new, but the agent part is the newest. So how has the peer to peer been going? Do you feel like the feedback has been good and, you know, people are being able to improve their stories or whatever they're asking for help on? Peer to peer can be a little mixed because it's people on the Internet.

00:04:01 SPEAKER_01
to peer can be a little mixed because it's people on the Internet. Yeah. You know how they can be. You're going to have some people who give really thorough critiques and some people who are rushing through it because they just want to get the points so they can post their own up there. So you got to take it all with a grain of salt. But it's there if you want to get the information. You have to learn who to ignore and who to listen to. But another thing I found that is really helping people is actually doing the critiques of other people's writing. You know, we've had a lot of people contact us and say, hey, I didn't realize. how much I was going to learn just by doing these critiques.

00:04:34 SPEAKER_03
Right, because you can see it. I did that with poetry. I was like part of a poetry cohort and every week we would, you know, workshop poems. So everyone had to put in one poem and we would go through them and like, you know, you offer feedback or critique or whatever. And it does help you improve because you're looking for it in other people's work that you can then see it. in your own better or you find something they did something really well that you're like oh i really like that i want to pull that into my writing yeah because you tend to be blind to it in your own work until you start seeing other places yeah i found the best critique class when i was first

00:05:06 SPEAKER_01
because you tend to be blind to it in your own work until you start seeing other places yeah

00:05:10 SPEAKER_02
i found the best critique class when i was first because I was a nonfiction writer to go to being a novelist, which is totally different, was being in a class, the gal was a literary agent. But her whole class was you critiquing other people and them critiquing you. And then she would do an overview. And you learn so much reading what other people do. Really helpful.

00:05:33 SPEAKER_03
I would like to talk more just about query letters in general. You said you created Query Tracker like through your own journey, correct? And it is now the standard for how people submit. So can you just talk about that journey a little bit and what you learned along the way to make it something that worked for both the author and the agent that's taking submissions?

00:05:59 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and the agent side didn't come along for about 10 years after just the author side was started. And I guess to give you a little idea how it works is... 20 years ago when I was querying, there were a few websites with database, there were databases of agents, but I kept querying the same agent twice, getting confused. My records were off and I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could just check a box right here on the website to mark that I've already queried this agent? And that's when I thought, well, why can't I? Let's just make that. So it's not just a database of agents, it's also that you keep track of everything. And then, what was it, about 2016, I did Query Manager.

00:06:32 SPEAKER_00
then,

00:06:35 SPEAKER_01
did Query Manager. for the agents, so they can start receiving queries using query forms. And at the beginning, those are two separate services, and slowly I've been kind of combining them together into one. But Query Tracker can be used for any agent, not just those agents who use Query Manager.

00:06:52 SPEAKER_03
So the process would be, I've never used Query Tracker because that's not how I published my book. It was a different process, and I don't have anything to query at the moment. So just sort of like... What does it look like? Do you find agents elsewhere? Does Query Tracker help you look up agents that might be in your genre that are accepting work? If I was a brand new author and I was going to go to Query Tracker because I really have this manuscript that needs to get out there, what would that journey look like?

00:07:26 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's a fully searchable database of about 3 ,000 agents. I can't remember exactly how many. And I spend a lot of time trying to keep those all up to date. What genres they're representing, if they're open, if they're closed, how they want to receive their queries. So you have all the tools to go in there and search for them. So then you'll get your results of, say, your genre. Then you can, there'll be links to their websites and other places where you can read up about each agent that met your search. And then when you find when you want a query, you mark it on Query Tracker, which we call adding that agent to your query list. But now you have a list of all the agents that you want to want to query. And then as you send out the queries, you then mark on this query checker when you sent the query, then you can mark when the reply came in. And if it's an agent that uses query manager, then that's all done automatically for you. But if they don't use query manager,

00:08:19 SPEAKER_01
they don't use query manager, then you have to manually record when you sent the query, when the reply was. And then because we have all that information from all these queries, so now we can compile those into statistics. So you can look at an agent and say, hey, this agent replies, only replies 20 % of the time. Or this agent replies 80 % of the time, but hasn't requested a submission in two years. So you got all that extra information in there because everybody is adding their data.

00:08:45 SPEAKER_03
That is so cool. It sounds so complicated that, I mean. You built that. That's pretty neat.

00:08:50 SPEAKER_02
It's actually really easy. I was helping a client submit what was going on. And, you know, as long as you have your summary and you have your different statements and your author or buyer, you just fill in these forms and they go for query manager. For query tracker card. What I did was I went through and got everybody that was on Query Tracker, did all of them first, and then went back and found everybody who wasn't. And I started like a Google spreadsheet of who then I went through the next group. And this was for a historical fiction book. And I think it was about 40%. went through query manager which was i got that done fairly fast then the longer ones were did they want you to fill out a form on their website or did you need to send an email so i was having to put all those pieces together to be sending out to the rest of them but i was saying before we started recording we actually got one response from an agent who wanted the manuscript and we were very excited about that sent it off and he sent back it wasn't something he was super excited about but if you did and he gave us like almost a two -page thing of what what he thought should be improved about the characters where things were weak blah blah he'd read the whole thing and he just critiqued it You know, we're working madly to get all that updated on it. We hired a developmental editor to work with that. But it's, you know, that was kind of exciting. You get a lot of the rejections. Some of the rejections were just like form letters. But most of them, the people said something. that you knew this wasn't just a form letter. Those were easy to spot. The other one said a comment, you know, it's not quite exactly what I'm looking for, like this was on China, because it's not really an area I know how to pitch, you know, and that was all very interesting. I mean, it was a whole educational process.

00:10:46 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, actually on the form letters, if you want to know if something's a form letter, a lot of Query Tracker members will post up their replies they got from the agents on Query Tracker. So you can look at those to see if you were getting a form letter or if it's a custom letter.

00:11:00 SPEAKER_02
The custom letters had more than two paragraphs usually. It was usually one line and then a three -line thing. And those were like, they were pretty repetitive. Let's put it that way because I read all of them. But the other ones who went into longer paragraphs or talking about stuff, it's like, okay, this person actually read everything that I submitted. So I thought that was really good. It was nice. My client was really happy with that. At least we got some feedback.

00:11:25 SPEAKER_01
Feedback's hard to get. It's hard to get.

00:11:29 SPEAKER_03
So in the whole process, I mean, like you created this database, we can use it to submit our work. But you just wrote a book that will be out late in the summer. You want to talk about that? Because I think that it sounds interesting. mechanical way to find agents and submit your work, but you still have to have a good query. You still have to have a good synopsis. I mean, does the website help with all that too? Do you have a blog or tips and tricks or did you just put it all into the book?

00:11:59 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that's all in the book. The website, there's a place you can go on the website where mostly it's just links to other places where you can get information on how to write a query letter, how to write a synopsis, things like that. But it did all go into the book, though.

00:12:13 SPEAKER_03
So, I mean, do you want to talk about your book? I mean, it's just the stuff you've learned over 20 years. So, I mean, what are some of those things that, you know, make your book unique and would make people want to get it and read it?

00:12:27 SPEAKER_01
Having done this for 20 years, I get a lot of emails from people with questions on how to do things. How do you nudge an agent, for example? Not a single book I've ever seen talks about actually how do you do that? What is a nudge and how do you do it? So I took all those questions that I've gotten over the last 20 years. I kept a list of them because I'd write out my answers because I'd get the same questions over and over again. So I'd have my pre -made answers that I can send to people whenever I got the question. So I had a book of all these questions and answers. And I thought, well, why don't I just post these or compile these into a book?

00:13:02 SPEAKER_02
And so what's it called, the book?

00:13:03 SPEAKER_01
It's called the Modern Guide to Querying Literary Agents.

00:13:07 SPEAKER_03
Okay. So how do you nudge an agent? I'm curious now.

00:13:11 SPEAKER_01
Well, it depends on how you sent the query. Was it an email query? Was it a query manager query or a different query form? So you got to start that way. Okay. Well, pick one of those. A query manager, you can't always nudge because the agents have the option of turning that off. Okay. But if the agent hasn't turned it off, whenever you send a query on query manager, you get a link. to your query status page. It's a private link. It'll show you your query, the agent's reply. And on that page, there'll be a contact agent button to send the agent a message to ask or to send your nudge that way. But if they turn that off, because some agents do, then you're stuck. You just can't nudge. You just got to wait.

00:13:51 SPEAKER_03
What if you did it through regular email and then you just send them an email saying, hey, Did you read my query letter?

00:14:00 SPEAKER_01
In the book, we actually have some sample verbiage you can use for the knife, what to put in the subject line. You know, it's important that you refer to your query letter in the nudge email because the agent doesn't know who you are.

00:14:14 SPEAKER_03
Right. I just feel like querying is this big mythical beast. So I could change that. Yeah, that's good. I think that even for me, I mean, I work in this industry and I still am like, man, it's such a vulnerable process to start to like send out queries and hope that somebody likes your query letter enough to ask for pages or even. give you a reply. And I know that that is true of most authors. Do you have advice for them? Or I don't know.

00:14:46 SPEAKER_01
The biggest advice is don't give up. One of the things we did in the books, we took a lot of the data from Query Tracker and put some fun little charts and graphs in the book. And I can't remember the numbers exactly, but I believe it was something like 20 % of authors who find an agent had to send out over 100 query letters. Do you think?

00:15:04 SPEAKER_00
you think?

00:15:05 SPEAKER_01
Yeah. First time, you never hear about the ones who took it to 100 queries. I don't know.

00:15:10 SPEAKER_03
don't know. I feel like I only hear about the ones who took it to 100 queries.

00:15:14 SPEAKER_02
But we know someone who went to 200 queries and finally gave up.

00:15:18 SPEAKER_03
Yeah. Do you think that there is a level of querying that you give up on? You have a database of, you said, about 3 ,000 agents. Send out 3 ,000 queries.

00:15:27 SPEAKER_01
I wouldn't say give up. I would say you might need to shelve that book and write a different one. But that's not really giving up.

00:15:35 SPEAKER_02
Okay. That's true. That's giving up on that book for the moment. The moment,

00:15:38 SPEAKER_01
moment, yeah. Because who knows, you might get, every time you write a book, you're going to get better. And then you can go back and you can edit that book and make it better someday.

00:15:47 SPEAKER_03
Don't we know someone who did that? Like they self -published their first book and that, was that William Bernhardt? No,

00:15:53 SPEAKER_02
no, he didn't self -publish. But he went, I think he was somebody who was up to close to 200 curry letters without an agent. They got his book and his first book became a number one New York Times seller, but he went for 10 years querying.

00:16:08 SPEAKER_03
Maybe it's not him I'm thinking of. I feel like we had someone on the podcast that had ended up self -publishing their first book and then their next book got picked up and then they went back and fixed their first book because they got a series. So by the time they'd worked their series, they were able to go back and fix their first book because they knew how to write better. But I don't know. who that was.

00:16:30 SPEAKER_02
was. I remember how, but you know, writing is every, every day that you do it, you get better, you know, and every day that you don't, you sort of fall out, you know, staying into the book. If you're not doing your five pages, you're losing it.

00:16:45 SPEAKER_03
Yeah. And I think that, but I think there's also that first, maybe the first two books, you don't really know what you're doing. You don't even like, you have a story, but you don't get the arc or. So, I mean, it's a hard sell out there in the world and Patrick's making it easier. So do you think that with your new service, with the critique, do you think that that will help people, you know, go through the process? Like what if they've gone through querying and then they bring their book that's not getting picked up into the critique? Do you think that would help them like figure out why people aren't? you know, agents aren't interested or something? I guess it depends on the reason why it's not being picked up.

00:17:27 SPEAKER_01
guess it depends on the reason why it's not being picked up. There can be some very well -written books. There's nothing wrong with them at all, but they're not going to be picked up just because of any current, it doesn't meet a current trend or something. Now, if it's not being picked up because the writing is subpar and certainly getting critiqued and working it would help there.

00:17:48 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, all of those things help you build your, you know, it's a craft and you have to keep building it. You have to get... you know, developing and getting better at it. And walking away for a couple of years, it's hard to get back into it. I'm speaking from experience here. So it's hard to get back into the flow of doing it.

00:18:08 SPEAKER_03
It is. So, Patrick, you've built this engine, basically, right, that helps people get their manuscript out there. I mean, hopefully somewhere. At least it gets them into somebody's email inbox. Do you have advice for them, like, in the process from things that they should be doing while they're working on the manuscript or something to make their synopsis really good? You have 20 years looking at this with a really critical eye because you're making a system that works for both sides. How do we dispel the myth, I guess?

00:18:46 SPEAKER_01
Boy, that's a tough one because if there was an easy answer to that, everybody would be published.

00:18:51 SPEAKER_03
Hey, that's fair. That's fair. That is fairly true. That is fair.

00:18:55 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think also it's, I think one of the hardest things that, I forget how many, how long you let it be on Query Master, but people don't know how to summarize their book to write a really great synopsis that starts off in the first line. You know, they don't backwander and everything else. I think that's one of the hardest things that, you know, you've written a 300 -page book and you've got to put it into four paragraphs. That's really hard,

00:19:21 SPEAKER_01
really hard, I'll tell you the truth. I couldn't write that part of the querying book either. I found a partner who was better at that sort of thing. I'm good with the data and finding the agents. But when it comes to actually writing a synopsis or a query letter, I need help with that too. So I teamed up with Alyssa Matesec. She was with one of the big five publishers for a little while. Now she has an editing service and a YouTube channel that's pretty popular on writing. So we teamed up, and she wrote kind of the writing -related parts of the book, and I wrote the querying -related parts of the book.

00:19:55 SPEAKER_02
Well, I think the service that you have between the two to critique while you're writing, and then once you've got the manuscript together, critique your query letter, I think people also should probably look at, because I know your form. What I love, by the way, is I finally figured out I could duplicate it. I missed that button. So I was filling that in for about 10, 15 times before I found that button that had automatically filled it in.

00:20:23 SPEAKER_01
Because every agent can set up their form differently.

00:20:26 SPEAKER_02
Well, it only filled in where the agent had obviously let it be. And then there were big blanks. So I went in and I could fill those.

00:20:34 SPEAKER_01
If you never answered that question before, I won't fill it in. Yeah.

00:20:37 SPEAKER_02
But it was much easier that way. And then to go in and get it all in there, I think. Having like the synopsis was really important. The author bio that makes you interesting. Hardest thing is to write your own bio, I think, next door, summarizing your whole book. It's writing a, you know, a 50, 100 word description of you, you know, and why they should like you as the person writing this book.

00:21:07 SPEAKER_03
Your synopsis, your bio, comp titles. Those are like, I think the hardest part of that.

00:21:13 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they're putting that. They're stressing comp titles a lot lately. It didn't used to be a thing, but now you've got to have some good comp titles. And boy, careful, don't comp the biggest bestsellers out there.

00:21:25 SPEAKER_03
No, you need a mix, right? Like some of the bestsellers, some that are still doing good that maybe aren't way up here.

00:21:33 SPEAKER_01
One of the things I think we mentioned in the book, Query Manager lets agents automatically flag queries as they come in. They can put keywords in if your query has a certain keyword. or you comp a certain title it'll either get a green flag or a red flag and so many agents will red flag comp titles such as harry potter everybody compares their book to harry potter that's weird really yeah and they see it so often they just you just gotta roll your eyes it's like oh here's another one that thinks to the next harry potter so yeah don't comp to the the number one bestsellers out there find something that's that's good but and dealing well yeah but that's not going to be

00:21:53 SPEAKER_03
really yeah

00:21:54 SPEAKER_01
and they see it so often they just you just gotta roll your eyes it's like oh here's another one that thinks to the next harry potter so yeah don't comp to the the number one bestsellers out there find something that's that's good but and dealing well yeah but that's not going to be That's what everybody gives.

00:22:13 SPEAKER_02
Well, that's like finding the ones, like Harry Potter was in the 90s, finding something in the last five years. So they can see, you know, okay, this did this and this did that. You know, you've got to do a little research on it. Those are, because that's the market now. Harry Potter was the market. Wouldn't she sell that, 92, 93? They still sell. I mean, they do still sell. They still sell.

00:22:34 SPEAKER_03
do still sell.

00:22:34 SPEAKER_02
They still sell. I mean, it still sells, but it's not new.

00:22:34 SPEAKER_03
They still

00:22:38 SPEAKER_02
not new. It's not fresh. Books are always trying to find, at least the agents I've talked to, are always trying to find what's the next in this area. What's next?

00:22:49 SPEAKER_03
Yeah. I have a custom GPT for It Helps With Comp Titles. And I have it set then in the instructions for the two to three years, unless... There's something older that is still selling well. But it's designed to pick like five to six comp titles that vary from New York Times bestsellers to just indie authors that are doing well. Because it's hard to find comp titles, especially if we're unsure exactly of what our genre is.

00:23:22 SPEAKER_02
That's another writer problem. It is a writer problem. What is our genre?

00:23:24 SPEAKER_03
is a writer problem. What is our genre? And they think it's something and then it's not that at all. It's really,

00:23:31 SPEAKER_02
really, really trying.

00:23:32 SPEAKER_03
All right. So a good synopsis, a good bio, comp titles. What is something else that agents often want for querying, like inside Query Tracker, if you were going to? Fill out one of their forms. Or something that a lot of agents were looking for.

00:23:47 SPEAKER_01
something that a lot of agents were looking for. I don't know. A lot of times the agents don't know what they're looking for until they see it, too. Interesting.

00:23:54 SPEAKER_02
I found one thing inside Query Tracker was some wanted the first 10 pages. Some wanted one chapter. So I had to make all these different files to be able to upload. Some wanted... The first 50 pages, someone in the first three chapters, you know, you had to do it all differently. And preparing all of those so that you can easily upload what they want. Those were parts of the things that were never filled in.

00:24:20 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it would be nice if they all standardized on one thing. I've been trying to get them now that on Query Manager, just have the author upload the entire book and then you can read as much as you want. Yeah,

00:24:30 SPEAKER_03
that makes sense. I think that's how it should be anyway, because if they like the first 10 pages, then they're going to want the rest of the book anyway, right? Yeah,

00:24:38 SPEAKER_01
in the old days, you couldn't do that because it was all done in the mail, and it was expensive to mail an entire manuscript. But now, yeah, I just upload the whole thing. But a lot of it, still only want to see five pages or the first chapter. I think a lot of that are more the old school agents.

00:24:47 SPEAKER_02
a lot of it,

00:24:50 SPEAKER_02
think a lot of that are more the old school agents. I found one of the things... we do with writers and publishers networks. Actually, how I met you, Patrick, was when I took over doing our insider report and I list all the new agents that you list who are coming and we put them into our insider report and also the agents who may have changed agencies or opened again for queries because it's really helpful to know what's going on. You can sit there in Query Tracker and look at them and you know, because you search by genre. So if you search by genre, then it brings all of your genre up. And then you've got to say, all right, are they open for queries? Are they closed? You know, and then go in and say, okay, now here's what they want. It's really, to me, very helpful and very clean. It was easy to navigate. Thank you.

00:25:43 SPEAKER_01
you. It's, um, yeah, squirting is hard enough. Let's at least make this part easy. The rest of the other part's still going to be hard. I can't, there's nothing I can do about that.

00:25:51 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you can't twist the agent's arms. Are you looking for more agents that would want to be doing critiques, the little paid critiques?

00:25:59 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think we still have room for a few more.

00:26:01 SPEAKER_02
Oh, okay. I know someone who might be interested, so I'm going to let her know. But yeah, I think any critiquing you can get anywhere is really good, as long as they're readers. My problem is writers who don't read their genre. Because they don't know what's being sold. So if they haven't read a book in the last five years and they genre, they don't know what's selling. And you really need to be aware of that because that's who you're competing against.

00:26:31 SPEAKER_03
Well, and also it helps you. There's a formula, right? Like if you're a romance writer, there is a romance formula. If you that subgenre, they all. Yeah. But if you buck that system too much, like people aren't going to want to buy your book because people read romance because they like the formula.

00:26:48 SPEAKER_01
It's difficult for a publisher to take a chance on something completely new. Because what if people don't like it? But they know. They know people have liked these X number of books before that were written like this. So let's do more like that. It's just a little bit different.

00:27:03 SPEAKER_03
Right. And that makes sense because they are taking a risk. Even if they don't promote like they used to, they're still taking on all their production and distribution and all of that kind of stuff. There is some risk to them. Sometimes the new is worth the risk, but I think it just depends on the genre, right?

00:27:25 SPEAKER_02
Well, if you're in romance, they're kind of, unless you have a new hybrid romance sub -genre, because they're always looking for new ones of those. They have so many sub -genres in romance. I'm just amazed. But then they're, what, 55 % of the market? But they do in horror and thriller,

00:27:40 SPEAKER_03
they do in horror and thriller, too. They have a lot,

00:27:42 SPEAKER_02
have a lot, too. They have a lot, too. Yeah, legal thrillers, you know, different kinds of thrillers, P .I. thrillers. You can go to Query Tracker and get a list of the most queried genres and the most requested genres.

00:27:51 SPEAKER_01
can go to Query Tracker and get a list of the most queried genres and the most requested genres. Let me take a look here.

00:27:59 SPEAKER_03
Well, that would be good to know. Yeah, that's interesting. So you could go and look and see what's the most requested and then write a book for that. Right.

00:28:10 SPEAKER_03
I mean, that's any book, though, right?

00:28:13 SPEAKER_01
Most popular fiction genre to query right now is fantasy. That makes sense. The most popular genre where a submission request was made by an agent is, again, fantasy.

00:28:25 SPEAKER_03
Okay. So fantasy is hot right now. And that makes sense. The world's pretty doom and gloom. So fantasy lets you escape it.

00:28:34 SPEAKER_01
It used to be young adult was really popular.

00:28:36 SPEAKER_03
Young adult and dystopian. Dystopian used to be really popular like 10 years ago. Now young adult is the third most popular genre to query, but on the request list, it's all the way down to number eight.

00:28:42 SPEAKER_01
young adult is the third most popular genre to query, but on the request list, it's all the way down to number eight.

00:28:50 SPEAKER_02
What are the top 10 requests?

00:28:52 SPEAKER_01
Top 10 requested genres, fantasy, polar stance. Number three is literary. Number four is romance fantasy. Romanticy, is that what they're calling it now?

00:29:02 SPEAKER_02
A romantic scene. Number five is contemporary romance.

00:29:03 SPEAKER_01
five is contemporary romance. Six is horror. Seven is upmarket. Eight is young adult fantasy. Nine is romance comedy. And ten is speculative. So romance is on there three times.

00:29:15 SPEAKER_02
Yeah.

00:29:15 SPEAKER_03
I feel like it was every other one.

00:29:17 SPEAKER_02
Well, that's why it's the biggest selling group.

00:29:20 SPEAKER_03
Yeah. Romance is the biggest selling overall genre, right? Including all of its subs. But it's on the...

00:29:26 SPEAKER_01
it's on the... It's on the top requested list three times, but it's number nine on the most queried list.

00:29:33 SPEAKER_03
What are the most queried? Let's hear those. Yeah, let's see how they match what agents want to what people are querying.

00:29:39 SPEAKER_01
Fantasy, children's. Number three is young adult. Four is literary. Five is science fiction. Six is thriller. Seven, historical. Eight, picture book. Nine, romance. And ten is middle grade. I see middle grades are not even on the list of requests. The only thing that matches is fantasy.

00:29:55 SPEAKER_03
only thing that matches is fantasy. Yeah.

00:29:57 SPEAKER_02
Well, that's interesting.

00:30:00 SPEAKER_03
That is interesting. There's kind of a mix match there going,

00:30:01 SPEAKER_02
There's kind of a mix match there going, you know.

00:30:05 SPEAKER_03
You would have a better chance of if you went for most requested, right? Like if you submit to that, do you have a better chance, do you think? At the moment, wouldn't it? I mean, statistically.

00:30:16 SPEAKER_01
I mean, they're requesting more fantasy, but they're getting more fantasy, too. So now the competition's higher. Right.

00:30:21 SPEAKER_03
Right, but I would pick something like they're getting fantasy, but then the rest that's being queried doesn't match that top ten at all. Go for number two. What was number two? The most requested number two was thrillers.

00:30:33 SPEAKER_01
most requested number two was thrillers.

00:30:37 SPEAKER_03
So, interesting. That's funny that the lists don't match at all. That's why this world is so hard.

00:30:42 SPEAKER_01
why this

00:30:43 SPEAKER_03
world is so hard.

00:30:45 SPEAKER_01
But it's bad advice to say write something that the agents are looking for, too.

00:30:50 SPEAKER_02
No, I agree.

00:30:51 SPEAKER_01
We don't want to do that.

00:30:52 SPEAKER_02
It doesn't matter what the business is. You've got to know what the business is doing. That's the one thing I find a lot of writers don't do is they don't realize this is a business. It's been a hobby for four or five years while they're writing it at night and while they're working and everything. And it's a fantasy, but it's a business. And you need to at least be a little bit aware of what the business is doing.

00:31:14 SPEAKER_03
Right. I mean, it's all data, right? And that's all we're with.

00:31:17 SPEAKER_01
Ranges. Because like I said, a couple of years ago, young adult was probably number one on both lists.

00:31:23 SPEAKER_03
Yeah.

00:31:24 SPEAKER_01
And if you spend all that time writing a young adult book and now you're ready to query it, and so it's not popular anymore.

00:31:29 SPEAKER_03
No, you definitely have to write for yourself. Writing is our own journey. But I don't know. That was interesting. Thank you for sharing those numbers. That was definitely.

00:31:39 SPEAKER_02
Kind of eye -opening there.

00:31:41 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I don't know. It's like a little peek, right, into what Patrick does all the time. I mean, he's been looking at this for quite some time, 20 years, he says. So why don't we do this?

00:31:50 SPEAKER_02
why don't we do this? I think this is really good information for everybody. We'll put this up on the TalkingBookPublishing .live today. Excuse me, I put the wrong one. Dot today. On the website. But why don't you just, if somebody's... downloaded this on Spotify or something, please give them the URLs, the domains for the two services, QueryTracker and for your new critique.

00:32:16 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, QueryTracker is QueryTracker .com. And the other one they're critiquing is QTCritique .com. And if you want to see these top 10 agent lists, go to QueryTracker, go to the agents menu, and then just go to top. top 10 agents.

00:32:32 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I'm going to start looking at that more often. I feel like that's good. It's just good data that we didn't have when we started recording. Very good information.

00:32:42 SPEAKER_01
There's also a thing on Query Tracker where you can get a searchable database of all the offers and agents made so you can see what genres a specific agent has been offering on.

00:32:53 SPEAKER_02
Where is that? Where is that on? I never saw that page. Where is that? Go to the agents menu and go to offers of representation.

00:32:56 SPEAKER_01
that? Go to the agents menu and go to offers of representation. And you can see the genre. You can see the word counts of the books they're offering on. And if the agent, or excuse me, if the author did it, we offer success story interviews for every author who gets an agent. And part of that is they can include their query letter. So you can actually go in and see the query letter that the author actually wrote that got in the agent.

00:33:20 SPEAKER_03
That's really useful. It's really useful. Patrick, is your book up for pre -order yet?

00:33:25 SPEAKER_01
It is. Yeah, just went on for pre -order.

00:33:27 SPEAKER_03
Okay. I will put a link to that on our website, too, with the show notes. So if people want, you know, want to be able to get your book, because I have a sneaky suspicion that your book is super helpful for this stage of the game, you know, that authors are in when they're looking for. you know, looking at query tracker. And so I definitely would like to link that for you and for them because it's just, we're always here just to try to help people figure it out.

00:33:57 SPEAKER_02
Well, I appreciate you coming today, Patrick. And this has been really, really helpful and lots of information. Frankly, I hadn't found those top. So I'm going to go back into Query Tracker myself and check those out from time to time. And I think I'll actually put that in our insider letter that we do with Writers and Publishers Network onto our membership. Because, you know, I believe the more information you have, the smarter the decisions are you can make, you know, guessing.

00:34:27 SPEAKER_01
It really helps with your peace of mind, I think. You know, to know that you're not alone. When you're waiting on a reply from an agent, you can look on query tracker and say, oh, this agent usually takes six weeks to reply. So you don't have to check your email every day. You know you've got some time. You're not going to get a reply for a while.

00:34:41 SPEAKER_02
You're not going to

00:34:43 SPEAKER_01
Just gives you a little more peace of mind.

00:34:44 SPEAKER_02
Well, that's really important because I found some agents turn them around in a couple weeks. And I stopped doing queries in November. I'm still getting replies from some people now. So it took them a lot longer. And if you're on a short leash, none of them accepted the book. But if you're on a short leash or you're giving yourself only six months and I'm going to give up and self -publish, maybe you need to expand it out a little bit further and be a little more time, especially get to know the agent you're going to be pitching. You know, what do they do?

00:35:19 SPEAKER_01
Here's another trick. you go on query tracker and you can list you can sort the agent list by their average reply time so you can find the agents that reply the fastest and you query them first and you move down the list to the slower and slower agents but you want those fast ones first because not only is it nice to get a fast reply but if they do mention something about how to fix your query letter where you can improve or your query letter just isn't hitting with those fast ones you have time to fix it and then send it to the next group of fastest agents yeah the other thing i liked is when you clicked on an agent they had

00:35:48 SPEAKER_02
the other thing i liked is when you clicked on an agent they had Like they weren't through query tracker, but you had to email them or fill out an online form. Most of them told you what they wanted and what to do. Like I remember several, nothing over a hundred thousand words, you know, just, so don't even send it to them. If you've got 140 ,000 word manuscript, you know, I found that kind of information really, really helpful. And to me, it meant that agent was serious about what they wanted to see, you know, and some of them, some of them didn't. So those were, I looked. stuff like that when i got through with the query tracker group that i still found in your query manager but in query tracker the ones who didn't i went to those because it's okay this person's serious to me they've taken time to write this up and tell me what they're really looking in fact if an agent says they're looking for everything that's that's a red flag be careful yeah i never found any of those but i'd already sorted by historical fiction so i was already but you won't find them on query tracker no

00:36:38 SPEAKER_01
if an agent says they're looking for everything that's that's a red flag be careful yeah

00:36:43 SPEAKER_02
i never found any of those but i'd already sorted by historical fiction so i was already but

00:36:48 SPEAKER_01
you won't find them on query tracker no You might find them somewhere else.

00:36:52 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, those are not good advice,

00:36:52 SPEAKER_03
not good advice, though, because an agent who takes everyone is sort of like the ambulance chaser lawyer.

00:37:00 SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.

00:37:01 SPEAKER_01
That's a good analogy.

00:37:02 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, there was a guy out here when I first started in 2008 that was one of those. It was like it became pretty obvious pretty quick what he was doing. He was, I think, trying to create a business instead of pretending he already had one. And there are those people around, too. Well, again, thank you, Patrick. I appreciate the time. Dana had some really good questions because she's never worked the system. I've sort of worked it and had a different point of view. But I think your critique, QT critique, is really a good idea for people that don't have a writer's group they can join locally or anything, that they can take it on there and do it. And I think that's really a wonderful opportunity for people to get feedback. Because when you're typing alone in front of a screen, You know, you might think it sings, but does somebody else hear it singing? That's always the question to me.

00:37:55 SPEAKER_01
I'm the opposite. I always think it's terrible.

00:37:57 SPEAKER_02
Well, I think some things sing and some things are like, oh my God, what am I going to do with this? But anyway, thank you for being with us today. And if you want to... It was fun.

00:38:05 SPEAKER_01
It was fun.

00:38:05 SPEAKER_02
fun.

00:38:07 SPEAKER_01
I want to just take family on. It was a lot of fun.

00:38:19 SPEAKER_03
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